ICF GHK’s governance work aims to enhance accountability and to lay the groundwork for making service delivery effective and more sustainable over time. Our experience and skills lie in supporting policy, strategy and design, implementation and monitoring in diverse environments.

 

Our governance portfolio covers four outcome areas:

• Stabilisation, state building, development and rights in fragile situations

• Local governance and decentralisation

• Transparency, public sector reform and public finance management

• Voice and social accountability

Our starting point is usually political economy analysis because we have learned that political and other dynamics vary from society to society, and ‘best practice’ models rarely fit neatly everywhere.

 

We also know that neither new and more infrastructure, nor funds or institutional power inevitably translate into improved service delivery and access, successful projects and programmes, or lasting peace agreements and reforms.

 

We measure our results therefore in terms of helping to make decision-makers and service providers accountable, capable and legitimate, interacting within fair rules that build on both formal and informal institutions in a society or community.