LGALN Workshop: Data Gathering: A tool for Advocacy and Issue Resolution

About the workshop

South Africa has just celebrated 30 years of democracy and one of the initiatives to bring government closer to the people has been the devolution of power to local government authorities.

However, local government has suffered significant challenges in the provision of municipal services to its residents.

Some of the challenges experienced by the South African municipalities in the provision of municipal services are:

· Poor efficiency;

· Corruption;

· Political abuse of power;

· Lack of citizen participation;

· Shortage of machinery and equipment;

· Dysfunctional implementation of policy framework;

· Poorly maintained infrastructure;

· Poor responsiveness by municipal officials; and

· Lack of service delivery accountability.

Residents, activists and communities are frustrated at the bureaucracy involved in accessing resolution to issues but also the fact that some issues never seem to get resolved unless people resort to protests, and sometimes not even then.

The gathering of data for advocacy purposes is to assist community activists to be able to capture and gather real time data, either of an individual's issue or a systemic issue to be able to track resolution within the legislative framework or for the purposes of alternative measures like holding local government to account through litigation.

This workshop is for community leaders and activists that are seasoned local government campaigners, as well as those wanting to get involved in addressing local government challenges to be able to gather data in real time on issues that are occurring in the areas in which they work and live to create a portfolio of evidence to present to local government authorities to be able to address the issue; for escalation should the local government authority fail to address or resolve the issue or even for litigation purposes should there be a complete failure to provide a solution.