Ejemplo de aplicación: Plan de prevención de una mercería

The principle of national ownership is a stated emphasis of the MICS approach, and so governance here is discussed first in relation to the country and then in relation to global governance and the control mechanisms in place within UNICEF.

Appendix B details the governance and management structure at the national level, including terms of reference for each committee. Nominally, the BiH State level report was overseen by the BiH Agency for Statistics, however this body made no substantial inputs to the work and acted as an approval body only. A team of three experts, one from each of the constituent political/ethnic groups (Bosnjak, Serbian and Croatian) in the country held a rotating leadership, in a model quite frequently found in the post-Dayton State level structures.a Different institutional options were investigated (including the office of the Presidency) for the final national endorsement. The BiH Agency for Statistics was politically weak, possessed authority in name only and had no connection to developing policy for health or other services at the national level, nor to any line ministries (all relevant ministries were at entity level or below). However it represented the best available institutional ‘fit’ at the national level and the risk of the BiH Agency for Statistics hindering the work, blocking the survey altogether or

a

This is described in detail in the introduction section. Political or ethnic ‘balance’ was considered first in senior appointments within the government structures at all levels.

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withholding final approval was deemed to be low.a This decision was also supported by UN policy to work with and strengthen the post-Dayton administrative structures established at the national level.

The selection of the survey implementing partner in each entity took into account the complex political and administrative structures within the country, and required extensive consultation by the author in advance. In the FBiH, the Federation Public Health Institute (FBHI) was selected to conduct the survey on behalf of the lead institution, the FBiH Ministry of Health. In RS, the lead institution, the RS Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, directly conducted the survey. The choice of these two implementing partners was a practical one based on their capacity to implement the survey.b

Each entity established a Steering committee comprising staff from key ministries, other organisations and UNICEF, and chaired by the entity lead ministry. E f f o r t s were made to ensure that that the steering committees would not block or disrupt survey implementation. Attention was therefore paid to ensuring that ‘constructive’ individuals (where possible) were included in the committeesc

Efforts were also made to ensure that the survey team leaders and survey members in each entity were competent and qualified. Given the very low salaries for staff in the public sector, internationally funded projects, programmes and surveys represented considerable financial and professional opportunity. ‘Ownership’ of such opportunities was usually assumed by senior staff, who then passed the work to selected mid-

a

The previous, failed efforts to conduct national household surveys were usually blocked above Entity level, often through lack of a clearly designated approval body, or disruption by individuals or institutions at the Entity level, usually in the RS, and often citing procedural reasons.

b

At the time, the RS Statistical Office, which had been formed during the war, was deemed too politically unstable and technically weak to undertake the survey as implementing partner. They were included at Steering Committee level in the RS.

c

This is a personal and undocumented note from the author. It was well known at the time that certain individuals in positions of authority were not interested in cross-entity border collaboration of any kind, and others would expect payment for giving approval. Therefore, the author consulted closely with colleagues within the UN, local institutes, ministries, and the two designated Entity survey team leaders to achieve a working solution.

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career or junior colleagues, who were often selected on the basis of loyalty or allegiance rather than competence.

The approach taken by the author was to present the BiH MICS 2000 survey as largely a training opportunity for mid-career professionals and one where senior staff should have an oversight role on the steering committees and not a day-to-day role in implementing the survey itself. This broke with the usual practice at the time.a The author further appealed to national pride by insisting that such mid-career professionals would be able to deliver the first ever survey at the national level. The author further posed an option of engaging a foreign consultancy firm to complete the survey in the event that the entity bodies were unable to create a working structure and that included effective survey teams with technically competent members.b

At the international level, there was some degree of governance although no formal structure was in place. The UNICEF HQ MICS unit oversaw all of the MICS 2 national surveys. Although UNICEF did not have a formal role in endorsing or approving the survey, they did give guidance on data quality, and on whether the standards of the MICS 3 series overall had been met.c The importance at the national level of having UNICEF ‘approval’ of the data was to have an independent sponsorship of the survey approach, and this was useful at times when the local processes were deadlocked or agreement could not be reached.

a

The financial incentives for being a budget holder for international projects were considerable. A source of frustration for international development workers in BiH in 2000 was the control of international project budgets by senior individuals in a position of power, who were then able to further leverage their position by control of these funds. Not all of these senior individuals had the skills required to deliver results on such projects, which led to frustration and failures on both sides.

b

This was the option used in Afghanistan and was proposed for other countries with challenging national structures or circumstances. The author reasoned that engaging a foreign consultancy firm would remove the stream of funding altogether from local control and would also remove an excellent professional training opportunity from talented mid-career professionals in the country who had had few such opportunities over the preceding decade.

c _{During each survey round, the UNICEF HQ MICS unit queried one or more of the national surveys and}

where they deviated substantially from the MICS approach and methodology or had serious data quality problems, the official endorsement of UNICEF was withdrawn.

160 3.21.3 Management

On a day-to-day level, the BiH MICS 2000 survey was run by a management committee, comprising key members of each entity survey team and UNICEF staff, and this was chaired by the author. The management committee allowed practical liaison between the two entity teams to ensure that the questionnaires were effectively identical and that identical methods were used for training, fieldwork, quality control and data entry. In each entity, there were separate training, fieldwork, data entry and analysis teams, and these were required to mirror each other in their approach.

An important feature of the BiH MICS 2000 survey was the use of staged contracts. The UNICEF BiH country office signed a separate agreement with each entity implementing partner. Payment at each stage was contingent on meeting agreed phased outputs including completed meetings of the steering committee with signed minutes, piloting of the questionnaire, and completed training, fieldwork, data entry, reports, data sets, and analysis. Deadlines for each phase were included in the contract.

These staged contracts were an essential local survey design feature and were central to the success of the governance model and the effective application of a single negotiating text strategy. Prior to this, payments to the entity statistical offices or other implementing partners for surveys had been based on advances for survey costs with no direct linking of payments to outputs. This contractual approach clarified a results-based payment schedule and provided leverage to deliver the survey on time, on budget. It also helped ensure that survey funds were used for the method intended.a