After a decade of reforms to boost tax collection, in 2014 the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) faced up to one of its biggest remaining challenges. Although the agency had significantly improved its internal capacity—along with its ability to collect taxes from registered taxpayers—large numbers of Ugandans paid nothing because they were unregistered or because inadequate compliance monitoring enabled them to underpay. The holes in the system undermined public trust and bedeviled the URA’s efforts to meet the government-mandated target to raise tax revenue to 16% of gross domestic product. The URA then joined other government agencies to bring millions of unregistered citizens into the tax net, and it tightened the oversight of existing taxpayers who were paying less than their fair share. Prime targets were millions of Ugandans who worked in the informal economy, which the government said accounted for nearly half of the country’s economic activity. At the same time, the URA set up operations to go after wealthy and politically connected individuals who avoided paying their full tax load, and it created a separate unit to press government departments that failed to remit to the URA the taxes they collected, such as withholdings from employees. The URA’s program achieved strong gains on all three fronts and thereby helped increase the country’s tax-to-GDP ratio to 14.2% in the 2017–18 fiscal year from 11.3% in 2013–14. Just as important, the program made significant progress toward a fairer distribution of the tax burden for Ugandans across all economic levels.

Leon Schreiber drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Kampala, Uganda, in January and February 2019. Case published April 2019.

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See related Uganda Revenue Case Study: Righting the Ship: Uganda Overhauls its Tax Agency, 2004-2014

In the early 2000s, the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) faced a crisis. Even after adopting a modernized legal framework that made the agency semiautonomous—able to operate much as a business would, though still accountable to a public board—the institution remained paralyzed by corruption, outdated technologies and procedures, and a toxic organizational culture. In 2004, to begin righting the ship, the URA’s board appointed 43-year-old Allen Kagina, who had served the agency for more than a decade, as the new commissioner general. Kagina engineered a radical overhaul that required all 2,000 URA staff members to reapply for new positions under a revamped organizational structure. A new modernization office overhauled tax procedures, upgraded the URA’s technology, improved anticorruption measures, strengthened the tax investigation and prosecution function, and enhanced staff capacity. At the same time, the URA was working to smooth its customs procedures and improve cooperation with partner countries in the East African Community. 

Leon Schreiber drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Kampala, Uganda, in January and February 2019. Case published April 2019.

To view a short version of the case, please click here

See related Uganda Revenue Authority Case Study: Bolstering Revenue, Building Fairness: Uganda Extends its Tax Reach, 2014-2018

In 2010, the government, private businesses, and local universities in the northern Mexico state of Nuevo León forged an unusual alliance to design and implement sweeping law-enforcement reforms in a challenging context. At the time, powerful drug cartels were fighting increasingly bitter and bloody wars to control their turf—which intimidated an existing police service already hampered by low pay, weak morale, corruption, and disorganization. Public confidence in the state’s ability to maintain order had evaporated. During the next five years, the public–private partnership oversaw the creation of an entirely new police service that, in tandem with other reforms, significantly strengthened the state’s capacity to ensure public safety and helped rebuild public confidence.

Patrick Signoret drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in March and April 2018 and on earlier research carried out by Ariana Markowitz and Alejandra Rangel Smith in October 2014. New York University’s Marron Institute helped support Alejandra Rangel Smith’s participation. Case published July 2018.

In late 2015, Liberia’s newly appointed education minister, George Werner, recognized that the government school system was wasting money and failing its students. Shortly before Werner assumed office, a pilot project had identified significant numbers of ghost workers (teachers who never showed up for their jobs or were fraudulently included on the payroll) as well as teachers who lacked even basic qualifications. Although the project covered just three of Liberia’s 15 counties (the most populous counties of Montserrado, Nimba, and Bong), the findings illuminated a long-standing national problem. Resolving to put an end to the abuses, Werner and senior ministry officials created a program implementation unit dedicated to the nationwide project, refined vetting procedures for assessing qualifications, and introduced mandatory competency testing that laid the foundation for additional reforms. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf provided crucial political support when the project ran into resistance from the national teachers’ association. By February 2018, the education ministry had removed 83% of the 2,046 ghost teachers, and planned to remove the remaining 17% that it identified during the last six months of the project. Overall, the project generated $2.3 million in annual savings that opened spaces for new teachers in the school system and budget, with the ministry expecting that this number would increase to $3.1 million once all ghost teachers were gone. As a result of the project, the ministry hired 1,371 trained new graduate teachers. Still, challenges remained: 49% of public school teachers had failed the competency tests. Armed with this important baseline data, the ministry had to decide what to do to improve teacher quality.

Leon Schreiber drafted this case study with assistance from Blaykyi Kenyah based on interviews conducted in Monrovia, Liberia, in August 2017. Case published February 2018.

Citizens of the Philippines were used to receiving poor service in government offices. Activities as basic as obtaining a driver’s license were slow and complex, and the tortuous processes created opportunities for public employees to solicit bribes for faster service. In an effort to improve service delivery, Congress passed the Anti–Red Tape Act in 2007. But, getting civil servants to comply with the act from civil servants presented a big challenge. In 2010, the Civil Service Commission began to conduct annual social audits to assess both the public’s satisfaction with frontline services and the degree to which offices adhered to the Act’s provisions. For the audits to succeed, the commission had to both persuade skeptical citizens to cooperate with the survey, and find ways to motivate civil servants to improve in response to poor ratings. Because budget constraints limited the use of financial incentives, the commission linked the results to other oversight programs and used social pressure to prod civil servants to improve the quality and efficiency of their work. During the survey’s first four years, the commission oversaw improvement in citizens’ ratings of public services but still faced challenges in raising awareness of the law and using it reshape public expectations.

Maya Gainer drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Manila in November 2014. Case published April 2015.

Associated Interview(s): Jesse Robredo