Setting up CCT programs: some key challenges

1. Setting up CCT programs: some key challenges Ferdinando Regalia Head of Social Policy & Economics UNICEF, South Africa Results Based Financing Workshop June 23rd – 27th, 2008, Kigali

2. Key institutional challenges • Multi-sector approach (leveraging synergies) • Mainly Education, Health & Nutrition…but not only • Institutional & inter-institutional arrangements: crucial decisions • Choice of CCT program executing agency • Line ministry, social fund, administratively autonomous entity within a ministry, etc. • Mapping multiple stakeholders to functions • CCT agency & ministries (central & local level), sub-national governments, providers (health providers, schools, payment agencies), communities, beneficiaries

3. Key institutional challenges (2) • Multiple functions • Strategic, planning & budgeting, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and auditing • Coordination mechanisms: few, feasible and effective • Creating incentives for coordination

4. Key design challenges • Objectives: setting the “right conditions” and rewards • Monitoring beneficiaries’ expected and unexpected behaviors • Transfers to whom? Targeting and eligibility criteria • Geographic and per household (poverty-based) targeting, categorical targeting (i.e. mothers/care givers of children belonging to specific age group), etc… • Be operationally savvy: eligibility definition should be relatively easy to operationalize

5. Key design challenges (2) • How much? Size of the transfer/incentive: no golden rule • It depends on: program’s objectives, ex-ante assessment of direct and indirect costs of accessing services, fiscal feasibility, etc. • Ideally, evaluate the impact of transfers of different sizes before nationwide roll-out (controlling for beneficiaries’ and services’ characteristics) • How frequently? • For how long?

6. Key operational challenges • Staffing: “relatively” small teams • Skills- and technology-intensive…but nothing extraordinary • High start-up costs but administrative costs as % of transfers fall quickly as coverage expands • good benchmark: ~ 15%; exceptional: below 10% • Management Information System (MIS) set up • Managing a dynamic roster of beneficiaries (constant updating) • Handling a high volume of transactions (monitoring/payment cycle)

7. Key operational challenges (2) • Validating availability and quality of services • Joint validation: CCT agency, health ministry • Scaling up plans to fill gaps • Selecting and enrolling beneficiaries • Field work, data processing, application of eligibility criteria • Issues of documentation • Identification and enrollment • Mapping beneficiaries to service providers

8. Key operational challenges (3) • Monitoring beneficiaries’ compliance with “conditions” • Arrangements to reduce workload for service providers • “Conditional on paper, un-conditional in practice” • Delivering payments • Outsourcing options: financial institutions, security agencies, post offices, etc. • Mastering a “tight” monitoring/payment cycle (each 2-4 months) • Constant updating of beneficiaries’ data base

9. Key operational challenges (4) • Implementing fiduciary mechanisms • Formal/informal auditing (financial, social auditing, etc.), mechanisms to handle complaints, etc. • Planning from the beginning and setting aside resources for process evaluations & quantitative/qualitative impact evaluations • Critical to learn by doing and make adjustments • Nicaragua: four years impact evaluation plan • Quantitative baseline (2000), Follow up surveys (2001, 2002, 2004) • Qualitative evaluation (2003)