The following article was written and generously supplied by Ken Fullerton, who is based in Johannesburg South Africa.
Results Based Accountability (RBA), also referred to as Outcomes Based Accountability, is a “disciplined way of thinking and taking action that communities can use to improve the lives of children, youth, families, adults and the community as a whole”. It can also be used by governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and private businesses to improve the performance of their programs and services. RBA is different from other methods used for overcoming developmental challenges because it is a simple and common sense framework that relies upon a data-driven approach. It consists of a decision making process that can help communities and organisations move from talking about problems to actually taking action(s) to help solve those problems. Phil Lee, President of the Clear Impact, an RBA consulting firm based in the United States, says of RBA that it “is a powerful tool for measuraby improving the impact of programs on or for their customers”.
RBA has been effectively implemented by governments and NGOs all over the world, including in South Africa. It has been used for developmental agendas and programs related to issues around community improvement, education, entrepreneurship, health, safety (crime), youth, and more. According to Lee, RBA is particularly important in the South African development context given that “the stakes are so high for the customers of programs designed to deliver renewable energy”. The RBA framework has been applied in environmental contexts, specifically in some environmental protection entities across the USA, but as yet there is no fully documented case of RBA being used in the context of energy. Although it may not yet have been applied by any particular organisation working in the field of energy in South Africa, the RBA framework can and should be applied and used by organisations that have programs aimed at improving communities through enabling access to renewable energy.
The importance of access to energy cannot be understated. Approximately 1.2 billion people worldwide do not have access to electricity. An additional 1 billion only have access to unreliable electricity, while nearly 3 billion people rely on traditional biomass (wood and charcoal). In South Africa over 90% of the country’s electricity is generated using coal. The cost of obtaining electricity is rising on an annual basis and is hampered by a lack of ongoing investment in infrastructure and regular load shedding (where there is excess demand on the national electricity grid and certain suburbs, towns or regions have to incur no electricity for a period of time). Despite the national government’s progress in achieving universal access to free and basic services, nearly 7 million households continue to rely on unsafe and inferior forms of energy (paraffin for example).
Access to energy is central to nearly every major challenge and opportunity faced by the world’s population, including in South Africa. Enabling access to sustainable energy sources for the world’s poorest can help strengthen economies, protect ecosystems and the environment and achieve equality. Furthermore, it can foster income generating activities, enable the successful provision of basic services including health care and education, and it can help to reduce carbon emissions, thereby helping to curb climate change. Its importance has been recognised by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and will likely be a focal element of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that will succeed the MDGs. The decade running from 2014 to 2024 has also been declared by the United Nations General Assembly as the ‘Decade of Sustainable Energy for All’.
The RBA framework could be particularly useful for the collection of energy related data on poor households within a particular community. Successfully measuring a program’s performance, through the use of the RBA framework, allows for two key benefits – 1) higher likelihood of improved performance of the program and organisation(s) implementing it, and 2) it can help reveal whether or not a program is actually successful in improving community well-being, enabling individuals to more easily communicate this value to funders and the public. The sharing of success stories and program value can then be used to garner support and resources.
In terms of performance improvement, RBA enables the implementing organisation(s) to determine how much they did (e.g. the number of activities completed or customers served), how well the organisation(s) implemented the program (e.g. the level of customer satisfaction) and, most importantly, to what extent program clients are better off as a result of the program (e.g. the number of program participant households that have gained access to solar energy). Commenting on the flexibility of RBA, and how it can be applied to energy access programs, Lee notes that “with RBA, managers have data and a framework for decision making that are simple, common sense, and actually useful for improving the impact of the program for its customers.”
For further information about RBA in South Africa, contact Accelerate Performance at info@accelerateperformance.co.za. Accelerate Performance also hosts regular RBA Community of Practice meetings to discuss RBA, its components, and how it can be effectively implemented in South African conditions. For more information on how you can become involved in these meetings, contact Charlotte Tervit at charlotte@accelerateperformance.co.za.
Written by Ken Fullerton (@KenFullerton)
ken_fullerton@hotmail.com
July 2015
