Sub-National Governance (SNG) Programme

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The Sub-National Governance (SNG) programme, a 5-year DFID funded initiative, managed by Oxford Policy Management (OPM), was specifically designed to improve the Pakistan provincial government’s capacity to respond more efficiently and effectively to the public service needs of the local communities. The programme’s primary areas of focus included, implementation of governance policies, efficient public financial management and investment in innovations in governance to improve the access to and satisfaction with the basic public services. The initiative incorporated an iterative and collaborative approach, which encouraged participation and feedback from a range of stakeholders to help achieve relevant and effective results.

SNG programme was piloted in a total of twelve districts in the provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), where six pilot districts were selected from each province. In Punjab, these included Sheikhupura, Hafizabad and Mandi Bahauddin in North and Sahiwal, Vehari and Bahawalnagar in the southern region. The project team of each province worked with the local authorities to strengthen governance at the district level. These led to demand-driven solutions, relevant to the different provincial contexts. The programme employed a range of methodologies to assess needs, understand key political influences and target service delivery priorities.

Objectives

The Programme teams provided technical assistance in the following key areas to help district governments of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa better plan, budget and target services. The programme supports the achievement of these objectives by enabling delivery of three programme-level outputs:

  • Public Financial Management (PFM) and planning systems improved;
  • Devolved systems, processes and budgets better focused on service delivery; and
  • Support to innovative experiments, some of which substantially improved service delivery

Work streams of SNG

The core policy areas of the Programme were:
  • Public Financial Management (PFM)
  • Decentralisation & Local Governance
  • Planning & Governance
  • District Delivery Challenge Fund (DDFC)

Achievements of SNG

  • Helped improve Budget Transparency Score of the Punjab Government from a baseline of 55% in 2014 to 68% in 2017.
  • Strengthened provincial planning processes and developed strategic changes in the Planning Cycle aimed to address the shortcomings observed in the Annual Development Programme (ADP) process for the past few years.
  • Developed the new ADP Formulation Framework, which allowed departments to prepare more informed projects.
  • Formulated PFM Reform Strategy, which contributed to 40% increase in tax revenue and 33% increase in development expenditure.
  • Drafted the Interim Punjab Finance Commission (PFC) Award 2017 which empowered Local Governments by increasing their share in provincial revenue to 44%.
  • Piloted Har Zindagi project, which replaced the existing EVACCS.
  • Institutionalised capacity building tools within the Finance Department, which identified 25000 new tax payers.
  • Piloted Tele-Medicine & Diagnosis project under which 87,836 patients were treated in Sheikhupura.
  • Initiated District Delivery Challenge Fund (DDCF) for innovative solutions in education and health, which benefitted 1592,921 people in 6 districts of Punjab. 
  • Introduced transparency and competitiveness for the DDCF grants to the public and private sector entities.
  • Established Evidence Based Budgeting in 6 Districts through smart inventory management by Teemardar project, realistic budget allocations and 6 Need Assessments.
  • Piloted GIS enabled Integrated Ambulance Service (IAS), which bridged the gap of doorstep delivery of medical services for Emergency Obstetric and New Born Care (EmONC).

Stakeholders

The governments of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab were SNG’s primary partners. Moreover, to help them improve public services, SNG worked with a number of key provincial government departments, including:

Consortium Partners

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Funding

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