Municipal Barometer Support Programme

The need for reliable local level data in South Africa has increased tremendously in the 19 years since the advent of democracy in South Africa. However there have been growing concerns among key agencies regarding the lack of accessibility of readily available, and up-to-date local level data.

Planners at regional and local levels are frustrated with the lack of adequate data to support effective program planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. This has impact on government’s performance and accountability and consequently on the voice of citizens in South Africa.

The latter because without proper access to data, citizens struggle to make informed decisions and they find it more challenging holding government accountable.

The South African Local Government Association (SALGA) responded to these challenges by establishing a Local Data Programme. This initiative brings key data agencies together to make local level data easily accessible.

The vision is that through easy accessible, accurate, interpretable and comparable data at local government level, citizens will be empowered and (local) government will improve their responsiveness and accountability.

Consequently, it was decided to start developing the Municipal Barometer (MB), a web-based tool that can be used to manage and disseminate local level data to all citizens in South Africa.

The Municipal Barometer is based on a technical innovative tool which is used in the Netherlands. Municipal officials use this web portal to get insight into local data for planning purposes and citizens visit the site to compare relevant data with data from other municipalities so they can make informed decisions and/or engage with their municipality.

The tool has also proven to be successful in engaging civil society. Journalists, for example, use the data from the Dutch Municipal Barometer to rank municipalities and ‘name and shame’ their performance.

The primary objectives of the South African Municipal Barometer are:

• To provide municipalities and their stakeholders (including civil society organizations and all citizens) easy access to wide ranging local level data on areas that municipalities are required to plan and / or report on
• To build the capacity of municipalities to locate, access, interpret and utilize data for planning, budgeting and governance processes
• To improve municipal governance and performance by equipping municipal officers with the necessary information they need for planning, implementing and monitoring projects
• To provide South African citizens with a tool to hold local governments accountable.