In 2011, ICMA conducted an assessment of the incident command systems of the volunteer fire departments in Paraguay known as "Amarillos," or "Yellows," and provided training to help strengthen their capabilities. The program, funded by the United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), sought to improve coordination among the decentralized fire companies and improve their ability to respond effectively to emergency incidents.
In an earlier project, ICMA successfully brought together the Municipalities of Asunción, Luque, and Itaguá, Paraguay, and Austin, Texas, in a Resource Cities Partnership to exchange experiences and increase local government institutional capacity and efficiency. This goal was also emphasized through a program that specifically sought to develop a municipal diagnostic system to measure performance.
Asunción, Luque, & Itauguá - Austin, TX
The objective of the Resource Cities Partnership was to provide the municipalities with the tools to implement viable strategies and ideas, with the end result of strengthening their financial and institutional functions. In particular, the partnership focused on solid waste management systems and performance measurement. In Asunción, the solid waste management issues related more specifically to collection and routing, vehicle maintenance, and garbage characterization.
To serve the goal of strengthening operations, ICMA aided Asunción in learning how to incorporate performance measurement into its annual budget development exercise. The city adopted Austin’s technique of drawing up a “business plan” for each department as the basis for building its budget. ICMA also helped Asunción incorporate the practice of separating the budget into several funds to track the performance of enterprise-type activities such as solid waste management, vehicle maintenance, and building inspection.
Institutional Municipal Diagnostic System (SIDIM)
In 1998, ICMA provided technical assistance to the Municipality of Asunción for the elaboration of an Institutional Municipal Diagnostic System (SIDIM), based on the U.S. Treasury Department’s methodology for evaluating the performance of financial entities.
The purpose of SIDIM was to design and establish procedures for evaluating the essential administrative areas of the municipality that required support, such as financial administration, management of municipal operations, and debt capacity. ICMA began by implementing a vision-building exercise to clearly stipulate what the city should be like in the future. ICMA’s strategy thus became one where the city’s inhabitants would become citizens and Asunción would become a “livable” city.
The team furthered these initial stipulations by preparing a set of action plans, designing support activities, and defining a regulatory framework. On the financial administration side, the team developed a set of indicators, analyzed the cadastre issue and budget management capacity, while incorporating ideas about management, leadership and transparency. The team also developed a brief description and a questionnaire in order to thoroughly assess each item.
Though the overall result of the evaluation was not a positive one, this experience demonstrated that the evaluation process itself worked; it allowed the team to implement a performance measurement system and develop recommendations, among other things. The evaluation brought to light the deficiencies and problems facing the municipality. For political reasons, the municipality decided not to make public the results of the evaluation. Since there was no external pressure to implement the recommendations, this experience became only a theoretical exercise. The only way this process can truly work is when the tool is implemented with true political will to accept both flattering and unflattering results. For this reason, the tool is best applied by new administrations.