Through the USAID-funded Regional Partnership for Decentralization and Local Governance in the Americas initiative (1998-2006), ICMA worked to promote best practices and share leading-edge technologies aimed at strengthening democracy and local governance.
To that end, ICMA identified three main components as key to successfully carrying out the objectives of this project: capacity building, local economic development, and municipal finance.
The results of eight intensive years of activity are documented in several reports focusing on important intiatives such as regional cooperation and association (mancomunidades), the potential of distance learning to help deliver the skills and knowledge needed to manage local governments throughout the region, and the decentralization trends throughout Central America.
Under the capacity-building component, ICMA worked in three main areas: strengthening the institutional capacity of the Federación de Municipios del Istmo Centroamericano (FEMICA); providing technical assistance to the Organization of American States (OAS) in its efforts to organize the Red Inter-Americana de Alto Nivel sobre Descentralizacóon, Gobierno Local y Participación Ciudadana (RIAD); and promoting distance and e-learning as an efficient and viable alternative to train municipal functionaries, and thereby improve local governance and foster citizen participation.
ICMA’s local economic development initiatives focused on identifying and analyzing regional approaches and lessons learned, in particular experiences dealing with mancomunidades. To that end, ICMA cooperated closely with its partners in the region, international donor agencies, USAID and its missions in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In its efforts toward strengthening municipal finance initiatives, ICMA – with the collaboration of its partners – identified the key obstacles to sustainable municipal financial management and helped set priorities and identify approaches to local revenue generation, integrated financial management systems and the certification of local government financial officers.
Through various mechanisms, including research studies, technical assistance, meetings and gatherings, and widespread dissemination efforts, ICMA enabled the Partnership and its members to share information and experiences in selected technical areas, such as performance measurement, local government training, municipal finance, and ethics.
Through these efforts, ICMA hoped to assist international donor agencies and other interested parties to better understand the important initiatives being undertaken by regional and domestic municipal government associations in promoting decentralization and strengthening democracy. By taking into account the needs and inputs of local governments in the technical assistance decision-making process, ICMA believes the donor community will be better prepared to provide adequate and effective cooperation.
Many of the experiences and lessons learned from this program's precursor, the International Forum for Cooperation on Local Government in Latin America and the Caribbean (the Forum), were highly useful to ICMA in its efforts to implement the Partnership.
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