Some real work for a change

I've heard of these beasts before, but not having worked directly in a municipal government, I've never helped to assemble “the Budget”. Until now.

Before you doze off or move to the next blog in your list, let me say that it's not that bad.

Perhaps a bit of history is required before I launch into this. In addition to VSO, which has placed a number of volunteers at the Council over the years, the German-based organization GTZ has been working with the Mazabuka Municipal Council for several years. Part of GTZ's mandate is to revamp Council management and budgeting practices. As part of this mandate, they have created a number of manuals, guidelines and training programs on several topics like Strategic Planning, Budgeting, Service Delivery and so on. Though it does sound a bit dry, it's all important stuff and I'm very impressed with the kind of work that they have done in Zambia and in Mazabuka specifically.

At any rate, I was asked to help in developing the Council Strategic Plan and the budget. This year, the Council is going to attempt a new type of three-year budget process that they call the Medium-Term Expenditure Forecast, or MTEF, which is to be based on the Strategic Plan. Unfortunately, there has been a of procrastination on these two initiatives; the budget needs to be completed by the end of September so that it can go to the Ministry of Local Government and Housing for approval by year end. For such a complex project, they should have started preparing in earnest much earlier in the year.  As for the Strategic Plan, well, that one will just have to wait a bit longer.

There is more to the story but I won't bore you with that stuff. What I do want to say is that I have been conducting a series of workshops with the staff of each of the Council departments over the last few days. The discussions have been fruitful but our overriding dilemma is that there is so much material to cover in so little time. At least it's a start.

My observation is that many staff, particularly those at the lower rungs of the ladder, have never really been asked about what they should be striving for. Often it seems that the management either ignores or simply fails to recognize the efforts and talents of the people that actually get the work done. One of the participants today confirmed my suspicion; he admitted that he'd never been asked about his views on how his unit works, despite having worked for the Council for 3 years.  I can definitely see the value in participatory methods, which form the basis of VSO's approach; they do indeed work and those who are included invariably appreciate being heard. Yesterday, though we didn't finish all that was on the agenda, one of the participants came up to me afterwards and paid me a very nice compliment. He said, “Andrew, you're a very good facilitator. I want to learn from you.” It doesn't get much better than that.

Anyways, I just wanted to share some of the “real work” that I was brought here to do.

Discussing the "objectives" for the Planning Department with the assistance of my lovely counterpart Victoria.

Developing strategies to ensure better coordination with other development agents.

A day's output.  I think it makes sense to us. :-)