The delivery of urban environmental services is among the functions devolved to local governments. As public services, they are routinely evaluated typically using 'hard' performance measures. The current trend of local governance incorporates citizens' perspectives in assessing service performance. In this study, the importance and 'usefulness' of citizen satisfaction surveys in local urban environmental management are explored using the case of the local government of unit (LGU) of Quezon City, Philippines and its experience with the Citizen Satisfaction Index System (CSIS). For Quezon City, citizen satisfaction ratings are an important indication of city performance. For the Environmental Protection and Waste Management Department (EPWMD), data and information is considered 'useful' if it is (1) able to help craft the future directions of the Department, (2) able to help identify the services that can be removed, (3) able to reflect actionable community feedback, (4) presented in the form of disaggregated data and evidence and (5) easy to interpret by the users. In applying the criteria to evaluate the data and information generated from the CSIS 2014 and 2016, the study demonstrates the merits of using 'soft' performance measures in appraising and improving local urban environmental services.
Road crash deaths in the Philippine have been increasing, from 6806 in 2006 to 10 012 in 2015, representing about 47% increase over a 10 year period or an average increase of about 4% annually. This is despite efforts of the Philippines to address road safety through various policies, programs and plans.Poor data governance on road crashes continues to be one of the major challenges in addressing road safety in the Philippines. The number of road traffic deaths may even be underestimated due to underreporting, with only 10% of road crashes being reported. For example, the Philippines Department of Public Works and Highways reported 1513 road traffic deaths in 2013 capturing only 6.9% of the estimated number of 10 379 road traffic deaths reported by WHO in the same year.The disparity and inconsistency in reports and data pose a problem in properly identifying and prioritizing evidence-based policies and cost-effective programs that are needed to help reduce road crash deaths in the country. Using data from desktop reviews, expert round table discussions, multi-stakeholder policy dialogues and secondary data gathered from various government offices such as the Department of Transportation Department of Health, Philippine National Police, Metro Manila Development Authority and the Philippine Statistics Authority, this paper discusses the road safety data landscape in the Philippines. In particular, the paper focuses on the who, what and how road safety data and data systems are managed by different government agencies as a function of their mandates to collect, process, store and disseminate data that are relevant to their primary functions; initiatives for integration; gaps and challenges; and recommendations to improve road safety data for better informed and evidence-based policy and decision-making in the country.
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