How can we equip local governments to plan better for governance and service delivery?
Large programmatic interventions of development partners, especially at sub-national levels, are challenged by a lack of reliable data for intervention planning and monitoring. Athena, in consortium with Development Gateway, set out to resolve the lack quality data across thematic areas. It established these as: citizenship and governance, service delivery, economy and environment. It then developed capacities at a city level, in the African context. Athena developed a practical and innovative data toolkit to help local governments identify, collect, manage, analyze and utilize data. It developed this toolkit to enable them to understand a city's parameters, govern and plan better for the future. The toolkit takes a composite approach of integrating globally proven decision support tools, along with a suite of in-house tools, to build on established knowledge and methods.
The toolkit also allows City Managers to assess the current maturity of the data ecosystem, and pin-point specific improvement levers. It factors in exogenous aspects, such as the devolution environment, to provide pathways for better data management. A curated set of resources (case studies, manuals, etc.) then supports the toolkit, thereby better supporting city managers.