ToolBOX
Urban Governance Index
| Purpose |
The UGI is a self-assessment tool for cities and local authorities which can help them to initiate a dialogue with a wider range of governmental and non-governmental stakeholders – belonging to the civil society and private sectors – on development priorities. It has two key objectives:
|
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Types of data used |
The UGI uses publicly available data: national and city statistics and regulations; available administrative data on population, budgets and procedures. All information is converted into quantitative data of two types: single numbers (expressed by averages, means, ratios, percentages), and binary variables (yes/no expressed as 0/1 assessments). |
||||||
| Methodology |
The UGI approach emphasises the processes of urban decision-making, the mechanisms and institutions through which various stakeholders articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations and mediate their differences. The indicators also focus on the quality of relationships between key stakeholders at the local level.
UN-HABITAT strongly advocates the use of participatory methods for the identification, collection and analysis of indicators at the local level. The data on the indicators is collected through a stakeholder meeting where all key urban actors are present. Participatory data collection not only enhances access to data and information, but also ensures collective ownership of results and lays the ground for joint initiatives towards governance reform. It also indicates openness on part of the municipality and improves its credibility with external partners and donors.
The data collected is based on published and available information, including administrative and budgetary information from reports, and statistics available at the national or city levels. The UGI includes 25 indicators under four themes corresponding to core urban governance principles - efficiency, equity, participation and accountability (see Table 3). Data from each indicator are normalised (allocated a value between 0 and 1) and weighted before being aggregated into the 4 sub-indices. The UGI is an average of the four sub-index values.
To view the full methodology of the UGI, view the addendum to the “Conceptual Foundation and Field Test Report on the Urban Governance Index (August 2004). |
||||||
| Area of Governance |
Local Governance and Decentralization
|
||||||
| Pro-poor /gender sensitive aspects |
Two indicators specifically address issues relating gender: “proportion of women councillors” and “proportion of women in key positions”. However, these are clearly not enough to fully capture issues of gender inequality, particularly in terms of access to basic services. UN-HABITAT advocates further gender disaggregation when expanding and locally adapting the index. For instance, the indicator concerning the existence of public fora for consultation could include information on the number/percentage of women who participate in these, thus providing further elaboration on the participation of women in local democracy.
The Global Campaign on Urban Governance aims explicitly at contributing to the eradication of poverty through improved urban governance. The UGI is a tool to further this goal. Two indicators under equity – “existence of a pro-poor pricing policy for water”, and “incentives for informal business” – explicitly focus on the poor. However, other indicators portray the general situation at the municipal level, without emphasising the situation of poor communities or citizens.
|
||||||
| Example indicators |
UGI sub-indices and indicators
|
||||||
| Organization |
United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HAB...
|
||||||
| Where to find this tool | |||||||
| Actionability |
|
||||||
| Complementarity |
|