Principles

The project approach is rooted in shared learning and does not involve any inspection, verification or auditing. The exercise is informed by the following principles:

• 360 Degree evaluation. The self-assessment exercise recognises the value of getting a range of perspectives from internal and external stakeholders. This approach will be phased in as confidence and trust in the process is built. The initial exercise will only involve internal stakeholders.
• Appreciative enquiry. The self-assessment is focused on highlighting the positive as well as the negative, and acknowledges that whilst all cities have examples of good practice there remains room to improve. The appreciative enquiry approach is aimed at fostering a culture of critical self-reflection, learning and collaboration.
• Incremental improvement. The exercise recognises that no city is ever able to achieve integrity and social accountability perfection and that there is always room to improve. It consequently seeks to build the institutional capacity to improve, rather than to foster a capacity to comply with a fixed, externally determined minimum compliance standard. It therefore incorporates ‘capability maturity model’ thinking that recognises that improvement follows a series of progressive incremental steps over time, and that institutional capacity is itself not static but in a state of constant change as contexts also change.
• Ideal benchmark. The self-assessment exercise involves comparing current city performance against the benchmark of an ideal municipality. It highlights what needs to be improved in order for a city to get closer to its own ambition regarding the ideal. The assessment process is geared to self-improvement, not comparison. It produces conclusions that enable a city to improve its performance against its own desired standard.

Methodology

City Assessment Framework
The InTAcT City Assessment Framework enables cities to assess their land development and infrastructure development practices through the lens of social accountability, integrity and transparency. With cities being the primary stakeholders in the InTAcT Project, the aim is to recognise good practice and to identify areas of improved performance related to social accountability, integrity and transparency.

More specifically, the InTAcT Project seeks to assist cities in unpacking the decision making processes related to land and infrastructure development (e.g. how decisions are made, ratified and communicated to relevant stakeholders, including citizens and communities; identify complexities, good practices and vulnerabilities), and explore the nexus between decisions made, land development, land use management and infrastructure projects, to ensure these decision processes achieve – or at least progress toward – integrity and social accountability outcomes.

The InTAcT Project focuses on four critical areas of decision-making related to land and infrastructure development, namely prioritisation, procurement, permissions and performance.
These are also areas where unaccountable, unethical and hidden actions typically manifest and which are consequently a focus for improving governance. The InTAcT Assessment Framework seeks to ascertain to what extent a City’s prioritisation, procurement, permissions and performance decisions adhere to requirements for integrity and social accountability. The table below unpacks what the assessment framework will focus on/what it is concerned about.

Assessment Questions
At a high level, the city assessment seeks to determine the following:

• What measures are in place to ensure integrity and social accountability in the City’s project prioritisation processes? (And are these measures that one would expect to find, in terms of policy and good practice/benchmarks?)
• What are the key integrity and social accountability challenges the City experiences in the prioritisation process? (The focus is on both the formal system, as put in place by the city, as well as the informal system decision-making – where sometimes the ‘real decisions’ are made, which are then legitimised through the formal system.)
• How can the City improve its processes to ensure better integrity and social accountability? (This could then focus on gaps/ transgressions/vulnerabilities in the formal system, but also identify checks and balances to curb informal decision making)

Each of these high level questions is supported by a series of sub-questions aimed at understanding the status quo and opportunities for improvement at a city level.

Assessment Instruments
The following assessment instruments have been developed:

• Questionnaire: The questionnaire serves to determine the City’s systems, processes and good practices related to decisions around land development and infrastructure development. This includes decisions around prioritisation, procurement, permissions and performance, which will be assessed through the lens of integrity and social accountability. The questionnaire will be self-administered by the cities. The questionnaire will be circulated as a single electronic document, but will require inputs from a variety of officials.
• Perception survey: To gauge further views on the performance and impact of current integrity and social accountability practices within the City, a perception survey will be circulated to key officials and Councillors involved in land development and/or infrastructure development processes and decisions. The survey will be provided electronically to officials and Councillors within the relevant
departments, structures and/or portfolios and will include frontline staff, middle management, senior management, ward Councilors and members of the mayoral committee.
• Semi-structured questionnaires for focus groups and interviews: During the 4-day assessment supported by the InTAcT Project Team, a series of interviews and focus groups will be held to deepen the review and engage with the findings from the questionnaire and perception survey.

These assessment instruments will assist the City to engage in a rigorous, systematic and focused review of its practices and to determine a performance improvement plan.

Process

Benchmarking
Each city’s performance will be assessed against the benchmark of an ideal municipality. The benchmark provides the framework for the self-assessment, looks at adherence to policy prescripts relevant to integrity and social accountability, perceptions on performance and impact, and evidence of good practice, all within the focus of land development and infrastructure development decision making. The InTAcT team will be seeking evidence that allows it to make a ‘reasoned’ assessment against each of the core outcomes/attributes.

The assessment process is a dynamic one, and requires a high degree of flexibility during the 4-day visit. The process is shown below:

A City Guidelines Document has been designed as a manual to help municipalities understand and prepare for the self-assessment process. Additional information, such as a copy of the assessment framework and a sample programme is included as annexures.

Self-assessment report and improvement plan Following the completion of the interviews and focus groups, the self-assessment team and external specialists will identify good practices and areas for improvement. The external specialists will then draft the self-assessment report and improvement plan based on the conclusions of the city’s self-assessment team. This will be finalised after comment and a further workshop with the self-assessment team.

Presentation to Mayco and senior management The first phase of the self-assessment will conclude with a presentation of the self-assessment findings and the improvement plan to the Mayoral Committee and the top management team.

Follow-Up The next phase of the project will involve writing up case studies and tools to support the improvement plans. This will draw on good practice and innovation in South African cities and elsewhere. It will also involve working with participating cities to explore key challenges they experience in the urban development decision-making cycle and how to address these.

Outputs

The Report
The feedback provided in the final presentation will be supplemented with a written report to further support the conclusions and recommendations made. This should be available approximately two weeks after the assessment.
The process for the drafting of the report will be as follows.

• Within one week of the end of the review, the InTAcT specialists will write the report and pass it to the other InTAcT team members for their comments and additions. These will then be incorporated and a first draft completed.
• At the end of the second week following the review, the City InTAcT Coordinator will send the draft report to the assessment team and Municipal Manager to check for accuracy and issues of wording. Within the following week, the Municipal Manager will raise any possible edits or amendments with the InTAcT team.
• The report will then be formatted and proofread by the team.
• The final version of the report will then be sent to the Municipal Manager and copied to the self-assessment team members.

The Improvement Plan The self-assessment is only one stage in the process of working towards improvement. While the assessment will identify good practice and areas requiring attention, it will be the res ponsibility of the Council to draw up a detailed improvement plan that will take further the recommendations made in the final report.

Evaluation

The Report
Evaluation is key to ensuring that the quality of the review process is maintained. Finding out what people think of the experience of a review is also a primary means of improving the programme. The participating municipality will be provided with evaluation forms at the end of the week.