Making services work : indicators, assessments, and benchmarking of the quality and governance of public service delivery in the human development sectors

Improving governance is central to improving results in human development. It is clear that money is not enough: improved outcomes from service delivery require better governance, including mechanisms for holding service providers accountable and appropriate incentives for performance. There is therefore a growing demand for indicators to measure how and whether these processes work, and how they affect health and education results. This paper makes the case for measuring governance policies and performance, and the quality of service delivery in health and education. It develops a framework for selecting and measuring a set of indicators and proposes options, drawing from new and innovative measurement tools and approaches. The paper proposes the adoption of a more systematic approach that will both facilitate the work of health and education policymakers and allow for cross-country comparisons and benchmarking.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Governance Indicators,Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Public Sector Expenditure Policy

Evidence for Speech Sound Disorder (SSD) Assessment

Comprehensive studies on aspects related to the assessment of different biomedical parameters (acoustic and laryngeal signs and oral airflow amplitude), as well as parameters for speech disorders, articulation rate, speech inconsistency, and speech stimulability, are essential for better professional practice and to understand misarticulations in children with speech sound disorders (SSDs). Different equipments that enable noninvasive collection and analysis of data have become more common in speech-language pathology practice. Studies recently conducted by our research group have emphasized the evaluation of auditory-perceptual processing by means of assessments of central auditory processing, electrophysiology of hearing—considering that pure-tone, speech audiometry, and tympanometry are routinely used with children during the diagnostic phase and motor speech production performed by acoustic analysis of speech, electroglottography, aerodynamic measures, and ultrasound tongue imaging. This chapter presents the recent advances observed in studies with Brazilian-Portuguese speakers aiming to improve the assessment of speech sound disorders and to understand better the relationship between the different processing mechanisms involved in speech

Performance-based financing as a health system reform : mapping the key dimensions for monitoring and evaluation

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Does “soft conditionality” increase the impact of cash transfers on desired outcomes? Evidence from a randomized control trial in Lesotho

Cash transfers programs have been shown to have positive effects on a variety of outcomes. While much of the literature focuses on the role of conditionality in achieving desired impact, this paper focuses on the role of ‘soft conditionality’ implemented through both ‘labeling’ and ‘messaging’ in evaluating the impact of the Child Grants Program in Lesotho, an unconditional cash transfer targeting poor households with orphans and vulnerable children. Beneficiary households received a clear message that the transfer should be spent on the interest and needs of children. Our findings are based on a randomized experiment and suggest that ‘soft conditionality’ does play a strong role in increasing expenditure for children, especially on education, clothing and footwear. Results indicate in fact that transfer income is spent differently from general income as it exerts both an income and a substitution effect. This behavioral change is confirmed by comparing the ex-ante expected behaviors with the ex-post actual response to the program. We find that for expenditure categories linked to the wellbeing of children the ex-post response was much higher than the ex-ante expected behavior

Social Assistance in Developing Countries Database Version 5.0

The Social Assistance in Developing Countries Database is a user-friendly tool that provides summary information on social assistance interventions in developing countries. It provides a summary of the evidence available on the effectiveness of social assistance interventions in developing countries. It focuses on programmes seeking to combine the reduction and mitigation of poverty, with strengthening and facilitating household investments capable of preventing poverty and securing development in the longer term. The inclusion of programmes is on the basis of the availability of information on design features, evaluation, size, scope, or significance. Version 5 of the database updates information on existing programmes and incorporates information on pilot social assistance programmes in Latin America, Asia and Africa. It also adopts a new typology that distinguishes between social assistance programmes providing pure income transfers; programmes that provide transfers plus interventions aimed at human, financial, or physical asset accumulation; and integrated poverty reduction programmes. This new typology has, in our view, several advantages. It is a more flexible, and more accurate, template with which to identify key programme features. It provides a good entry point into the conceptual underpinnings of social assistance programmes