- by Abid Ullah Jan
A unique model of information system for local development, presently being implemented by UNICEF in Pakistan.
Introduction to CIS
What is data?
Data consists of raw, isolated facts, which are used as a basis of reasoning or calculation. Facts in an information data base are mostly numerical facts, collected together for reference of information. For example, tables of temperature and humidity recorded by an automated weather station are part of a data. Those numbers are just data. With regard to child education, tables showing out of school children in a Union Council represent a data.
What is information?
Information is organised facts derived from study, survey, experience, or instructions. It is knowledge or facts communicated about a particular subject, event, etc. In the context of this handbook, information is a statistically defined quantity representing the probability of occurrence of a symbol, symptom, sequence, or event etc., as against the number of possible alternatives. [1]
Information consists of organized facts, low-level skills, simple rules, and basic procedures. A chart of changing temperature would be information. As would a simple step-by-step procedure for changing the batteries in the automated weather station. Or the number of infant deaths in a particular Union Council during a specified period is the basic information that could be used for comparison of the same phenomenon in other Union Council, as well as for monitoring the trend of child mortality in that particular Union Council.
What is information management?
Information Management includes all the processes from data collection and consolidation to its analysis and presentation for increasing the upper levels, and in our case facilitating better and informed decision-making.
The strategy and processes to collect, consolidate, present and enable the flow of relevant information for the benefit of different stakeholders is information management.
A systematic and organized attempt to collect and use information for the benefit of different stakeholders to transform their ability to store and use knowledge to improve performance.
Processes for creating, sustaining, applying, sharing and renewing information of enhancing performance and creating value.
Why CIS?
Government of Pakistan has made a tremendous effort to make devolution of power effective to the grassroots level. Part of the marginalized people empowerment is having a say in the development activities of their respective communities. Effective participation and voicing views in concerned local affairs is only possible with the help of complete local information and involvement in the planning process.
CIS gives an opportunity to local communities, whether in the form of Citizen Community Boards (CCBs) or some other form of organised village action forums. CIS involves communities in collecting basic information for local development planning on a sustainable basis. The same system helps in systematically aggregating, analysing and properly managing information at the District level in District Citizen Information Centres. CIS would assist in decentralization of services for local development activities through involving elected councillors and District Management in participatory methods of planning.
Purpose of CIS
CIS involves communities in collection and yielding information on key social and economic indicators for use by CCBs, VillageAction committees, concerned UC staff and District Managers.
CIS also provides a basis for development agencies and donors for making targeted interventions and reap the benefits of not only having bench marks but also a reliable monitoring mechanism to gauge impact of their activities over a period of time.
CIS makes the traditional social mobilization process redundant as instead of having a shopping list from the community about their needs, now the field staff has vital information about all major aspects of the community life. It makes the discussion, planning and implementation very focused and effective.
CIS lays stress on seeing that the databases thus generated are handled with extra care at all levels so that the plans and decisions based on this data become more effective and useful, and ultimately become instrumental in improving the standard of the people in the targets districts.
How is CIS unique?
Unlike many one-time information collection surveys, CIS is a continued process of information collection and update with the help of community-based activists who regularly update local information about households and their respective villages. They maintain a record of all information at the CCB or Village Organisations (VO) level.
These indigenously developed village profiles are aggregated at the Union Council and District levels for UC and District profiles. Community activists, who get an initial orientation before getting practically involved in information collection and update on regular basis, use specific information collection forms. This model enables District and Union council level planners to obtain up to date information both about various local activities and changes at the grassroots level.
The information collected from the grassroots is compiled at Union Council and finally District levels. With the help of established system at the grassroots level, it is easy to update information at UC and District levels on quarterly or six-monthly basis in an extremely cost effective and reliable manner.
As a result community-based participatory databases are established that directly links collected information to places and needs of the communities living there in. Villages develop their own Village Development Plans in which almost 70 percent of activities are such that the community can undertaken itself. Rest of the 30 per cent are the problems that communities are not in a position to address. For that they forward their proposals to UC and other concerned authorities.
Is CIS needed?
Community members have always been unaware of the environment in which they live – their indigenous knowledge of their environment is tremendous, but the information about their day to day affairs is always taken for granted, like the number of children that are out of school in a village, or the number of houses without a latrine, or the reasons behind a non-functional school. Once they are aware of such information and sensitized to such issues, they naturally get motivated and mobilized to act for changing their lives within the available resources, as well as plan for attracting the required resources.
Union Council is the basic unit for planning in the new Local Government set up. With the devolution of power, priorities and needs have considerably changed. Updated and detail information is needed for proper planning at each level. To adopt integrated UC and District development strategy and prioritised development plans, both the community and their elected representatives for the Local Government need to have access to basic, relevant and accurate information. At the macro-level government and funding agencies also need such information so that the development activities could be planned in favour of the under developed UCs and to involve community at the grassroots level in development enterprise.
Collection of basic and relevant information has thus become inevitable for realistic planning by all the actors involved at the UC level. CIS equally involves office bearers in the new Local Government set up, District Management team and other stakeholders in employing participatory methods of planning and implementation on the basis of crystallized information. CIS, thus, assists communities and Local Government in developing UC and District level Annual Development Programmes.
CIS and Union Council
Union Councils are designed to serve as agencies for development as well as to carry out the basic functions of Local Government. In the rural areas, functions of Union Councils are improvement and management of public works and services as well as for promotion of agriculture and village industry. The Union Council is supposed to formulate annual development plans, act as the construction and maintenance agency for sub-sector, and monitor the implementation of development projects of the provincial line departments. The District Council has similar responsibilities at the district level. It draws up a district development plan on the basis of development targets and financial allocations set by the provincial government and overseas. Funds are allocated on the basis of these development plans. The question now is: how much these development plans are based the real needs of the community and how much the decision taken in this regard have been based on sound information?
In practice the Union and District Councils are not undertaking these roles and responsibilities, nor is there any other source for obtaining authentic and relevant information. The new devolution of power plan would help the Local Government get empowered to a greater extent but it would still remain handicapped as far as local planning on scientifically collected, valid information is concerned. Their links with the community would be re-established and their hold on finances would get strengthened. However they would still need relevant information about the respective villages, Union Councils and Districts. CIS would play a vital role in decentralization and local level planning.
At the US level there is no experience or practice of the local level planning. The current planning practices do not take into consideration the value of information about and from the target group. Most of the planning is based either on political consideration or on factors which do not consider merit or need. The collected information is not used for planning or implementation decisions or for ensuring accountability in the system. For instance, schools are built where students and teachers are not available, BHUs are established where staff is unavailable, and water supply schemes are constructed where the community is unwilling or unable to operate them. CIS addresses such issues to a great extent.
Information flow in CIS
Under CIS programme information trickles upwards from community to district level. It aggregates data in different sectors such as health, education, sanitation, etc. from the household and village level to Union Council and District levels and then decentralize it back to UC an village levels. Village activists collect households and village information on regular basis. Village information committees or CCBs, wherever they are functional, regularly updated Village Profile.
The system narrows up at Union Council and District levels. Synthesized data is available to UCs to look into Village development plans and work on Union Council plan in collaboration with CCBs accordingly. At the district level, the system has a comprehensive socio-economic database, location map layers, etc. Community members develop their own village level maps, showing the latest position of their village and indicating where the problems lie. These village maps are integrated with the advanced GIS maps for a clear understanding of the ground situation by the District level planners. So, the layered maps available to District planners are a synthesis of GIS maps from sources like Survey of Pakistan and the information collected and put on village maps by the community members for their respective villages.
Types of Data and Responsibility for collection
Information is collected at two levels:
1. Information from Primary sources (Household level)
2. Information from secondary sources (Village/Community level).
Household is the basic and primary unit for data collection, aggregation, analysis and management. CIS trickles the information upwards. It aggregates development related data from the grassroots level to the central level and then decentralize it back to the community level. Community activists collect household and village level data on different sectors. The data is then aggregated at village, UC and District levels.
Information is collected from primary and secondary sources in the community. Primary sources involve household and village facilities data. Some secondary information is also collected from the records available at the village facilities and other sources at the district level. So household data is separately compiled than the village facilities data.
At village level, community activists, selected by the Social Organisers of the implementing organization in consultation with village elders and other influentials, collect household level information.
Social organizers of the implementing organizations visit target Union Councils, arrange a meeting with the UC Nazim, Naib Nazim, Councillors, school teachers and other notables. The Social Organiser introduces the programme (as mentioned in detail in later part of the Hand Book) and identify activists in different villages (mohallas) of the Union Council.
A Village Action Committee (VAC) is also formed. It works independently, where there is no CCB and works under CCB, where CCB is functional. It is comprised of elected Councillors, school teachers, retired government servants and other capable persons from the village, who is interested in information update, monitoring, planning and follow up of action plans on voluntary basis. Village level information is used for developing Village Development Plans (VDPs) in close collaboration with local community members. Information collection takes place in the following manner.
Household Level information Village Facilities Data
Initially, Social Organisers of the implementing programme collects data from the village information committee for further consolidation at the Union council and District levels. However, this role is gradually transferred to UC Secretary, who would be responsible for collecting data from CCBs and Village Action Committees for its consolidation, refinement and analysis at DCIC, before it is sent down to the UC and lower levels in a refined form. UC Development plans are developed on the basis of VDPs and information available about the concerned Union Council. At District level, all information is collected from the village level. Data is verified and entered into information database. Village and UC profiles are developed. Properly anslysed information is plotted on GIS maps for visual presentation and consolidated data is shared with the Ucs, CCBs and Village Action Committees. Data entry, consolidation and reporting is responsibility of the implementing organization, which then feeds this data into District Citizen Information Centre (DCIC) at the DCO Office.
What is Triple-A Process and what has it to do with CIS?
Triple-A is actually a technical term used for the process in which assessment and analysis is followed by action. Under CIS, the planning process covers all the three steps regardless of getting involved in any technical terms. However, intentionally referring to such terms gives the community an opportunity to specifically focus on the objectives of each phase in the process. The objective of using the term triple-A and following this process is to ensure community’s involvement and voice into each phase of the planning process from village to district level. In this process:
First ‘A’ stands for Assessment, which is covered through collection of fact and figures at the village level by village level activists;
Second ‘A’ stands for Analysis, under which the facts and figures are analysed to create a village profile in terms of key and selected indicators and identify areas for community and external intervention; and
Third ‘A’ stands for Action that the community takes as a result of developing Village and Union Council development plans. Action planning is done at different levels as follows:
At village level for what they can and will do collectively and in partnerships with different stakeholders responsible for local development;
At Union Council level, prioritized activities and/or projects are identified for consolidation into Union Council level planning; &
At Tehsil and District levels, prioritized Union Council needs and plans are put into Tehsil and District Council level Annual Development Plans.
Data Items at Various Levels
Household level data is collected about the following sectors and their corresponding data items:
1. Information from Primary Sources
GENERAL INFORMATION
- Head of the family
- Mohalla, village, Union Council name
- Residents by gender
- Children from 0 to 5 years old.
EDUCATION
- No. of children (5-9 years) going to school.
- No. of OOSC (5-9 years) by name, gender and age with reasons for not in school
- Education level (Primary, Middle, High, College, Technical) of other residents of household from 10 years and above.
- Distance from HH to nearest Primary school (Boys and Girls)
HEALTH/NUTRITION
- No. of Children born last year (one year recall period)
- Number of children death one day to one year and 1 to 5 years of age (with recall period of one year from the date of information gathering).
- Number of maternity related deaths – due to maternity related problem within 42 days of delivery. (Recall period of one year)
- Disease pattern in children under five and general population.
- Breast feeding pattern: exclusive breast feeding up to 5 months, up to I year, up to 18 months and 2 years
- Use of iodized salt and reasons for non-use
- Distance of Household to nearest BHU
SANITATION AND DRINKING WATER
- Availability of latrine by type.
- Availability and source of water inside house
- If not, outside source of water and distance
BIRTH REGISTRATION
- Registration of newborn (within one week)
- Registration after one week up to the age of 18 years.
SOCIO-ECONOMIC PATTERN
- Facilities of electricity, Radio, Tractor, thresher and telephone
- Employment status of earner/s of H.H
- Construction of house – type
- Ownership status of house and
- No of rooms which are exclusively used for the household members (not for storage or animal use.)
2. Information from Secondary Sources
The above-mentioned information is consolidated to extract information about the status of each sector in a village. Moreover, the following village level information is collected from the secondary sources by the Village Action Committees (VACs):
HEALTH
- Existence of health facility by type
- Ownership status (public and private)
EDUCATION
- Primary School enrolment gender-wise
- High school enrolment gender-wise
- Secondary school enrolment (gender wise)
- Technical school enrolment (gender wise)
- Ownership status of educational facilities
WATER
Available sources of irrigation water
SANITATION
- Village level solid waste disposal systems – classification by type.
- Mohalla level waste disposal system
- Lane pavement (in metres)
- Drains (Primary, secondary and tertiary in metres)
- Number of Households connected to main drain.
OTHER FACILITIES
- Post Office
- PCO
- Police station/Post
- Veterinary Institution
LAND, CROPS, MISC.
- Village total area by cultivated and uncultivated
- Terrain: e.g. Mountainous, Plain, Desert
- Nature of Soil
- Major Crops
- Livestock pattern
- Main crafts
- CBO/NGO in the village
POPULATION.
Population by gender and age composition (From census report or other later source)
RIGHTS AND PROTECTION ISSUES.
Information about human rights and protection related issues is collected by VAC or CCB through meetings with representative groups of women, minority, children, youth, etc. These problems are also highlighted on the village map so as to show which area or locality is seriously affected.
Updating Information at village level
A display board called Village Information Board (VIB) is put up at each CCB (if CCB is at village level), or at each VAC office in the villages, which shows all the static and variable information about the village. Some information is static over time and this static portion of the VIB is separately given from the information that changes frequently. The Village Action Committees (VAC) in their monthly and quarterly meetings regularly updates this information. Some communities have come up with innovative ideas of keeping a CIS register at their office. They note down relevant information, such as births and deaths in the village, and update VIB when they meet and share the rest of information, if there is any. The updated village information is sent to Secretary Union Council through Village Councillors or a member of VAC. Secretary Union Council updates UC Profile of the concerned Union Council accordingly. Secretary Union Council, in turn, send information to DCIC at the DCO office, where all information is updated on regular basis.
[1] Oxford Shorter Dictionary, Volume I, Page 1364, Clarendon Press, 1993