Core Governance Support
Despite daily headlines of conflict, poverty, environmental disaster and social disintegration, there are countries and institutions throughout the world working to foster good governance, advance economic freedom and support critically needed investments in people and places. Every continent is home to movements away from authoritarianism, from economic stagnation, and from instability and conflict. Whatever the differences among these transitions, public resource allocation, management and accountability are central to all of them. CGG is committed to helping countries in transition build core governance competencies to confront the exigencies of our time.

In its work in Southeast and Central Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe, CGG staff and Associates have tailored assistance on governance capacity building initiatives in a way that:

• Helps to build consensus among actors with divergent views of governance reform priorities;
• Differentiates among local governments so that reforms occur in a way that does not overburden weak local governments or hold back strong ones;
• Sequences implementation in a strategic way that builds increasingly strong capacity and good performance over time;
• Develops appropriate means to address fundamental concerns such as raising, allocating and managing public resources;
• Coordinates the role and activities of key local and national actors;
• Works on both national policy issues and concrete local organizational and operational reforms;
• Links reform initiatives to broader political and institutional changes needed to realize effective governance; and
• Focuses on results by designing programs with clear objectives, benchmarks to measure progress, procedures to ensure fiscal accountability, and a plan for effective monitoring and objective evaluation of progress.

More specifically, CGG staff and associates have considerable experience in four strategic core areas of good governance.

1. Governing Justly and Democratically

Public Sector Governance and Management

• Citizen participation and access to decision-making
• Local capacity building and community action
• Human resource management, civil service reform and training
• Equitable and cost effective procurement, and contracting
• Management of public-private sector relationships
• Building ethics and integrity into government and its partnerships

 Public Finance and Fiscal Reform

• Intergovernmental finance; fiscal and administrative decentralization capacities
• Budgeting and performance metrics, capital programming, investment planning
• Revenue development and forecasting
• Accounting and accountability

Anti-Corruption and Rule-of-Law

• Anti-corruption practices
• Organizational integrity
• Administration of criminal justice
• Legal reform and trade/investment law

2. Fostering Sustainable Economic Development

The Role of Local Government in Economic Development

• Strategic planning for economic growth
• Business and enterprise development strategies
• Tourism development, management, operations, and promotion
• “Diagnostic Clinic” methodology to assess sector opportunities

3. Providing Humanitarian Assistance

Disaster Risk Management

• Institutional reform required for disaster management
• Post disaster recovery and management

4. Advancing Peace and Security

Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation

• Post conflict recovery assistance programs

CGG is committed to working not only for governments, but also in partnership with governments. Rather than entering relationships with governments with preconceived ideas of "what should be," CGG staff and associates try to understand "what is" so that they can help government officials move in directions that they themselves consider desirable and possible.

Decentralization
Increasingly, CGG is called upon to apply its expertise to projects that aim to decentralize fiscal authority to local governments. Intergovernmental fiscal reform is a challenging and complex exercise; reform efforts in most countries are partial and fragmented. Recent work by our Associates has helped clients to:

• move beyond simplified textbook solutions to plans that differentiate between the capacities and needs of local governments in the same country or region;
• find rigorous methods of determining what levels of resources are needed to ensure that local governments have real capacity - for example, automated information systems, and reasonable staffing levels - to manage fiscal affairs;
• differentiate and coordinate the roles of multiple governmental entities, both local and national, to eliminate the inefficiencies that result from overlapping authority;
• link fiscal reform to broader administrative changes needed to facilitate sustainable governance reform; and
• open up fiscal decision making processes by developing methods for officials to account accurately for the management of public resources, and to regularly communicate this information to the public and the media.

Economic Freedom
One of the most fundamental issues of governance is how local governments and other local stakeholders – private businesses, community-based associations, NGOs and donors – can work together to enable sustainable economic growth that will increase job and business opportunities and reduce poverty. In particular, the role of local government in economic development is evolving quickly, and it is multi-faceted, encompassing a number of key responsibilities for which CGG can provide technical assistance and training:

• Advocacy – acting as a coherent voice for economic development for the city or region
• Planning and Policy – providing oversight related to economic growth
• Investment – guiding the allocation of public resources for economic development
• Partnering – creating new public-public partnerships to advance key projects/programs.
• Nurturing Entrepreneurship – providing assistance for local business start-ups/expansions.
• Human Resource Development – planning for the workforce of the future
• Community Participation – liaising with appropriate community interests
• Project Management – effectively directing economic growth initiatives

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