NU S Reflection on Its Social Audit Work

NU’s reflection on its Social Audit work.

The tension between local and systemic

• The social audits, and in particular the janitorial social audit have been conducted at a local level yet addressed citywide systemic issues. Partly this has been because the social audits have been used as advocacy strategies in and of themselves in order to secure systemic change or campaign goals, such as the implementation plan.
• This is also reflected in our design of the audit instruments – the questions and focus of the audits have been determined centrally – and to a large extent are framed with systemic questions in mind. In some cases, this means that we don’t illicit local findings and experiences because we have not designed the questionnaire with this in mind.
• In order to do this we tend to collect our evidence or sample at the local level and treat it as representative of citywide issues. This leaves the process open to attack from the City which tends to view this as political and make concerted efforts to delegitimise the method and data collected.
• Furthermore, in these instances local issues are lost due to the need to find general problems across areas. In the translation from local data collection and findings to citywide, people’s voices and experiences get lost and the findings tend to become about aggregate numbers and the data. We have perhaps got too caught up in data and percentages. How can we best capture the issues as experiences by the most marginalised in a way that gives them agency and facilitates an empowering engagement with the City?
• In terms of presentations at the public hearing then, we have yet to find a mechanism to give equal weighting to the “audit” and the “testimony” so that the public hearing is an evidence gathering exercise in itself and forms part of the findings.
• This means that when community members engage in local issues at the public hearing, these are not accurately recorded or followed up, so an opportunity is lost to recognise and resolve injustices. A consistent programme of problem solving through social audits would ensure that community members will take part and value the process.

The tension between one off events and longer term on-going practice

• The social audits have to date been more event based weeks with considerable attention and activity for short periods. The events bring considerable attention and raise the heat at that moment, and to a large extent have raised the profile of the method and brought sanitation issues into the public domain.
• However, focusing such intensive efforts in such a short space of time, often means that success is determined by the media response rather than remedial action for findings and the momentum soon fizzles out.
• In this model, follow up and advocacy tends to be political and managed centrally and focused on the broader policy issues and campaign goals. Even where we have secured commitments from officials, we may have failed to follow up on these to ensure the City delivers, or we may not have ensured that those who took part in the social audits were kept informed of the progress of these commitments. Indicative here is that we never insisted that Cllr Sonnenberg was not pressured to return after three months as promised.
• In terms of communities then, follow up action is not systematically planned or tracked as part of the social audit process. We may have raised and left expectations in the community and this may work against us in the long term in our ability to mobilise and motivate people.
• The social audit has potential as a tool to mobilise and organise people politically around a long term shared campaign for improvement of services.
• Though the individuals who took part became aware of their rights and learned a lot, its potential to educate people about service delivery and rights in a way that is sustainable and builds a movement is not fully exploited.
• Strategies that have been employed in India, such as drama, song and the public education campaign that have the ability to draw in people to the process have yet to be tested and tried.

The tension between confrontation and participation

• We have done a very good job of raising the profile of the social audit. The media campaign and launch as well as the report were all very well done and the fact that a number of high profile writers and personalities supported the audit publicly is testament to that.
• However, the audits have been extremely confrontational, partly because sanitation service delivery is viewed through the paradigm of party politics. This means that any engagement in the political space on sanitation is treated in much the same way that political engagements are treated – with a uniform and antagonistic defensiveness. Local service delivery issues quickly get blurred with national political polemics.
• For example, the City quickly and easily reframes the discussion in terms of its performance in relation to other metros in the country, avoiding responsibility, or the City reframes the discussion as a problem that rests with the people – they are not taking responsibility or vandalising infrastructure, or are unable to follow basic hygiene.
• Another strategy that the City uses is to reframe the discussion in terms of contextual or infrastructural problems. So the City commonly cites the quality of the land, the rate of urbanisation, the complexity of working in informal settlements as obstructions to good service delivery.
• In instances where they have to deal with the findings, they claim that their data is difference, that the data is contradictory, or simple that “that can’t be” reverting to systematic explanations of how the services “should” or “was intended to work” rather than addressing how it may be working in reality. This raises the questions as to whether this form of data evidence can ever be effective in public political discourse.
• The public hearings have especially been confrontational. There was a suggestion that we could make better use of observers – a broad panel of respected people who can view the process and comment on the findings may go a long way to ensuring accountability and responsiveness from the City side.
• The problem also lies in the institutional culture of the City. High level politicians are engaged in micro-managing bureaucrats at almost every level. This makes progress extremely difficult, particularly where politicians are obstructive. It prevents relationships of trust developing, especially with lower level staff, it prevents access to information.
• This means that we are forced to deal directly with central structures rather than those who are most familiar with and responsible for service delivery. This is a problem of levels – that we are unable at present to address or deal with the correct level of government, many of whom may be sympathetic to the cause and insufficient work has been done to identify and approach those who are responsible. The question as to whether the leadership would allow this is still to be tested.
• In this environment, even though the social audits are seeking practical remedial action for local issues, this is stalled or blocked. Every interaction with the City needs to be cautious and formal and there is a general paranoia within the City of interacting with the SJC or its members or partners.

• It was felt that we could make better use of panels at the public hearing – and a proposal was presented that we invite a range of stakeholders, for example fiscal representatives or at different levels of government.
• Likewise a reference group for local government has previously been raised as a possibility and DPME is keen to move forward with that agenda to open the door to the discussion as to what role local government can play to facilitate without it being state led.
• Likewise GIFT could be used to exert some for of pressure.
• At the same time concern was voiced that we might take too much of a step backward and over respond to the City, that the aggressiveness is in fact a sign of weakness rather than strength. The extent then that we would use the media and put public pressure on the City remains to be discussed and in a certain extent relies on how far discussions with the City go. Generally then, the tension and contradiction remains in finding a way to include the City whilst reserving the right to go public. Do we negotiate or “kick down the door” - keeping in mind that the experience of people using City services remains totally unacceptable, and that the City is most likely racist and essentially unsympathetic.

The tensions between professional and inclusive practices

• After three social audits, it is clear that we have improved on our capacity to perform social audits. SJC staff especially demonstrated a clear understanding and ability to manage a social audit operationally.
• Due in large part because of a lack of budget and service delivery data that is publicly available, especially disaggregated to a local level, we have focused on auditing the quality of service delivery and to a large extent collected our own data, rather than auditing or verifying the City’s data.
• In order to do this, our audits have been based largely on survey methods. One of the problems in doing surveys is that there are established research norms and standards which make them reliable which we are unable to follow, mostly because they are not appropriate or possible in a community process.
• The reliance on survey methods using questionnaires means that we may ask the wrong questions at times and there is a need to get more focus groups or discussion before developing questionnaires. For example, the janitorial service did not ask questions about disability, about flooding, or about toilet reporting – all of which came up but were not easily recorded as findings.
• The question of community auditor training becomes very important. We found even a full days training was insufficient and many people did not understand the questions or how to use the forms. Irrespective of the exact method used, community members who conduct audits require much more training in order to effectively perform the audit.
• The question was raised as to whether the audits should be conducted by the whole community or at least a large group or by a smaller group of well trained auditors. Does the community take part in the audit or in the public hearing? This has implications for training and inclusivity – unresolved.
• The current method opens us up to attacks on data reliability, research methodology and questions of sampling and representativeness. This in turn reframes the social audit as it is now about generating data rather than mobilising communities and demanding accountability.
• We have improved in our practice and have attempted to improve the questionnaires and data capturing processes, but there is a limit to what extent the survey method could ever be seen to be professional enough, or whether this is even desirable.
• Given that the public hearing should be held as soon as possible, it is especially hard to ensure that data is available by the public hearing. The City claims to be ambushed and unable to respond and there is a question as to how much time the City needs to study the “data” or whether this would make any difference.
• Our audits have included members from other organisations, including street committees, but there is further work to be done to ensure that the social audits get buy in from a broad range of community organisations and structures locally.
• This has had the effect of focusing the findings of the audit on the data, rather than the experience of people. This in turn means that instead of the City being held accountable for the service, the people are held accountable for the data they have collected. This limits social audits to being a research method rather than a radical claim to participatory democracy. We have to find the balance between getting a good method right and remembering that this method is a tool for empowerment and accountability first.