Using ICT as strategic tools to enhance CSOs’
capacity for collaborating with government

Takahiro NANRI
Program Officer
The Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF)
JAPANUsing ICT as strategic tools to enhance CSOs’ capacity forcollaborating with government
Takahiro NANRI
Program Officer,
The Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF)

1. CSOs as a growing actor
In recent days, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) have been playing significant roles
in social innovation and global governance as a growing actor.

In other words,

importance of CSOs’ activities has grown steadily, so much so that other sectors (e.g.
governments, international organizations, etc.) can no longer ignore them and creationof partnerships between CSOs and government has become a worldwide trend.

Given

the fact that the government no longer serves as an only actor to provide public services,
CSOs has been already playing active roles in the related area by closely cooperatingwith government in many of Asia-Pacific countries.

Likewise many governments

welcome participation of CSOs in formalizing various policies.

InternationalDevelopment Finance Institutions like the World Bank clearly address that CSOs canplay crucial roles to alleviate poverty and encourage the governments from theirdeveloping members countries to cooperate with CSOs at every stage of thedevelopment work.
However, it is true that various initiatives and efforts with regard to current cooperation
between CSOs and government are still under the stage to be further developed, taking
into account that those results may not always end in the manners that both parties cansatisfy.

For example, in the case that CSOs participate into formulation of a particularpolicy, CSOs may show their disappointment by stating that their recommendations andsuggestions are not properly considered in the final outputs.

Government may expect

more constructive and productive discussions with CSOs other than being criticized bythem.

This is due to the fact that both Government and CSOs still need someknowledge, experiences, and capacity, to effectively work together.

For instance,

CSOs sometimes misunderstand and/or misuse the opportunities and even lack ofcapacity to effectively engage into policy dialogue with government.

In other words,

some of them simply do not have enough skills to analyze the policy and present
alternative suggestions instead of criticisms, while others are not familiar with theprocess and/or system that the government proceeds the work.

On the other hand,government themselves may still lack of capacity and experiences to work with CSOs inbasic level, such as the ways to identify the groups to work together, to create/maintainfruitful relationships with them, to share the necessary information at each stage wherecollaboration takes place, to deal with their requests/demands, etc.
Under the circumstance, rapidly developing information and communication
technologies (ICTs) in our society can contribute to improvement of such the situation.
It even affects various aspects of CSOs’ operations as a matter of fact.

For example, infifteen years ago, it simply took costs and time for them to communicate with others
because they had to rely on postage and/or fax as major tools of communications.
Such the communication costs burdened CSOs whose financial resources were mostly
limited especially in the case that they needed to communicate with those who werebased in remote areas, which also resulted not only to restrict extent and frequency oftheir communications due to lack of the budget, but also to make their work delay
simply because it took much time to get the replies.

However, as a result of the rapid

development of ICTs, CSOs have been able to save the costs and time forcommunications dramatically such as by using email and internet, and it has evenincreased quality of their work by making it possible to work speedy and efficientmanners.

2. Key factors to develop partnership between CSOs and government
As already written, although both CSOs and government still look for the ways toeffectively work together throughout various initiatives and efforts, the current situation
will be more or less improved if both parties work for meeting at least the following
conditions at initial stage where cooperation takes place.
-Sharing common goals and objectives of cooperation
Without sharing common goals and objectives why both parties need tocooperate, the substances resulting from such the cooperation would not end
in satisfaction for both of them because it happens them to forward
cooperation with having different expectations from the beginning.

For

example, it supposes that there is an opportunity to discuss development
strategy of one country between CSOs and government.

The dialogue tends

to be confrontational if CSOs perceive the opportunity to influence theirvoices and conduct advocacy such as by presenting their demands toformalize and/or improve particular policies, while the venue is simply to
exchange information with various stakeholders including CSOs from thegovernment’s point of view.
-Sharing common understanding regarding roles of each party
Even though both parties agree on common goals and objectives to cooperateeach other, it will be crucial to clarify the roles that each of them is supposed
to play at the process they proceed a series of the work. In other words,
without clear definition of each own work, confusions occur when they
engage into actual work and it may heavily effect on accomplishing the goals
and objectives that have been already specified. For example, when a local
government financially supports a CSO to implement a project that provides a
primary health care service to the poor, roles of the CSO as an implementer
should be clearly differentiated from those of the government as a donor at thestages to design, implement, monitor, and evaluate the project, otherwise theproject may not end in success such as because the targeted beneficiaries
cannot access to the services properly, according to the original plan.
-Building enough credibility to work as partners
If both parties cannot create and maintain trustworthy relationship, there isdanger that cooperation between both parties becomes “superficial”, whichmeans that processing the work is more prioritized than its quality. For
example, when CSOs are given an opportunity to participate into a policy
formulation, one major comment arising from CSOs is that government
consults with them only as a “pose” to appeal its transparency andaccountability to broader public due to the fact that government does not taketheir suggestions and recommendations in the end.

In order to avoid suchthe situation, it is essential that both parties should make efforts to build
credibility, which makes them possible to respect each own expectations,views, positions, roles, and so on, when both parties work on the previous two
issues listed above.

Obviously the above three factors are very fundamental and there are still a number ofthe issues that should be done in order to promote truly functional cooperation.
Furthermore, meeting the above “requirements” would not be even easy work at actual
implementation levels, taking into account that types and/or forms of cooperation are
diversified depending on the issues to work on, actors who involve there, areas/
countries where cooperation takes place, etc. Therefore, the concrete guidelines towork them out may not exist from practical point of view. Instead, what can be done
at least is that both parties should have opportunities to sit down and consider the threeissues listed above before engaging into actual work, and then make any efforts to agree
on the overall direction and/or framework of the collaborating work.

By doing so, it

must at least contribute for improvement of critical issues that both parties are currently
facing to promote truly functional cooperation.

3. Legitimacy, transparency, and accountability
As already mentioned, although both CSOs and government still face critical issues thatneed to be solved in order to effectively cooperate each other, the focus here will be put
in how CSOs can challenge them, taking into account that existing studies seem to moreconcentrate on the work done by government than that of CSOs.

Within the context,enhancing CSOs’ legitimacy, transparency, and accountability can be one important areathat CSOs should challenge.
According to Dr. L. David Brown at the Hauser Center for Non-profit Organizations in
Harvard University, they can be perceived as follows.
-Accountability refers to the ways in which CSOs are held responsible fortheir actions by diver stakeholders.
-Transparency refers to processes, procedures, etc. by which CSOs disclose
information about their resources, activities, and impacts.
-Legitimacy refers to perception by key stakeholders that the existence,activities, and impact of CSOs are justifiable in terms of central social
values1.
Taking into account that CSOs are indisputably developing into a specific sector as
already mentioned, the flip side of social recognition of CSOs is society’s demand thatthey demonstrate legitimacy, transparency, and accountability of their existence, mission,activities, and so on.

Sharing with members, donors, and other stakeholders

information on, for example, whether donations and grants to CSOs are being usedappropriately and whether their services are effectively delivered to targeted
beneficiaries with good qualities. If CSOs are able to respond to demands of thestakeholders including government by establishing processes and procedures to properly
disclose such the information like their missions, activities, and impact, it willcontribute them for acquiring broad perception that they are justifiable in terms ofcentral social value.

Noting this state of affairs, enhancing CSOs’ legitimacy,transparency, and accountability will increase their own credibility toward otherstakeholders and it will help CSOs obtain social recognition that CSOs can surely play
crucial roles in social innovation and global governance, which can be a “basement” tocreate partnerships with others.

4. Using ICTs as strategic tools
CSOs should put particular focus on establishing an information management system bystrategically utilizing ICTs because it can be one of the key factors to enhance theirlegitimacy, transparency, and accountability. For instance, CSOs can strengthen someaspects of their work, like it is exemplified below, if they are able to establish the1For example, according to Dr. Brown, legitimacy could be grounded in representing a membership, or indemonstrated expertise on a topic, or by speaking for widely-held values, or by complying with legal requirements.

effective information management system.
-Effectively responding to stakeholders
Through the information management system, CSOs can improve the waysthat they communicate with both internal and external stakeholders including
government in timely and efficient manners.

For example, if such thesystem functions properly, CSOs can respond to demands and requests fromvarious stakeholders, such as members, donors, partners, at all the stages of
their operations.
-Proactively disseminating information about themselves
The system also makes it possible for CSOs to proactively disseminate theinformation with regard to their resources, activities, outputs, impact, etc.

Inother words, through dissemination of such the information like the annual
report, financial report, publications, result of evaluation regarding theirprojects, it can be the effective tool in approaching to various constituency
and stakeholders and help them acquire social recognition in terms of theirlegitimacy.

If CSOs succeed to proactively utilize ICTs by establishing the information
management system which at least functions in the above ways, it will contribute for
improvement of their operations to be more open, responsive, and justifiable, than everbefore, from constituency’s and/or stakeholders’ point of view.

In other words,

strategic integration of ICTs in their operations can more or less contribute forenhancement of their own legitimacy, transparency, and accountability, which makes
them possible to be ready for challenging the critical issues and/or situation that CSOs
themselves are currently facing in order to promote truly functional cooperation.
It is therefore strongly suggested that CSOs should come up with concrete strategies andaction plans to integrate ICTs as strategic tools in every aspect of their operations.
However, in order to do so, given the fact that CSOs may still need external supports insome aspects, such as to acquire technical knowledge and expertise, financial resources,and so on, active support of other sectors, particularly the government, regarding theinitiatives and efforts to be made by CSOs are definitely needed because it can say thatsuch the supports will return to them as their own benefits in the end because CSOs canstrengthen capacity to become their valuable partners.