Assessing the Implementation of Decentralized Management System: Babre Tabor Municipality Administration in Focus

This study addressed the efforts exerted on the implementation of decentralization management system employed a few years ago in a governmental institution. More specifically, this study attempted to assess the perceptions employees hold about the decentralization package, their decision-making practices and correlations among participants’ perception, decision-making practices and provision of resources. To this end, of one hundred and fifty employees, fifty of Debre Tabore Municipality administrative, in Amhara regional state, were selected in a mix of systematic and stratified sampling technique. Likert scale and frequency count itemized questionnaire administered and forty-eight sheets of questionnaire were returned filled in. The major findings showed that participants had a reasonable level of awareness on the positive roles of decentralization, considerable level of decision-making practices and some degree of perceived provisions of resources or support. Besides, there seemed to have positive relationships among the participants’ perceptions about municipality decentralization, input provision and practice of decision making. small but positive correlations among perceptions. A mere degree of variations of responses to the perceptions and practices of decentralization were also seen due to background differences in gender, position and work experiences. In light of the results, the decentralization could be implemented with a more focus of employees’ concern on resource provisions and shared commitment.

decentralization is delegation; it involves transfer of authorities and responsibilities from the central government to semi-autonomous agents for planning and managing government activities run by the central government (Adjei, 2007). Generally, in the process of decentralization elements such as authority, autonomy, accountability and capacity are decisive variables usually considered in implementation of decentralization program (USAID, 2009).
According to Robertson (2002), decentralization governance is recommended mainly for addressing problems of inefficiency of administration, macroeconomic instability and ineffective resources management and utilization. Solomon (2008) also notes, decentralization motivates localities for using their own knowledge and customs in the development process.
Decentralization as means of political and managerial administration, Bergh (2004) states the following functions: Reasons for decentralization among other things is to create proximity between the political representatives and citizens and therefore facilitates better mobilization and allocation of resources, more creative, innovative and responsive programmes which allow local experimentation and provides better opportunities for local residence to participate in decision making ( 2004:12).
Bergh notes that decentralization could create conducive managerial and administrative atmosphere for effective human, material and financial resource management and utilization for bringing about desired socioeconomic development in general and improvement of public service delivery.
However, such positive roles of decentralization entertain some forms of criticism that authorized local administrative individuals may abuse their power for mismanagement of resources and proliferation of corrupted behaviors and acts (Crook & Manor, 1998). In other words, the authors note narrow minded nationalists may use such structure of autonomy for their own personal privileges by neglecting the local community's participation and legal rights for managing and using the existing resources. Nevertheless, decentralization becomes a better option if it is implemented successfully. According to Gaulle (2010: 48), "successful public governance decentralization results in performance growth, compliance with the needs of the society and democratic development". Thus, decentralization in public governance or any kind of municipality administration has been used for effectively addressing administrative and managerial needs of citizens.
In municipality decentralization, Ostaaijen (2008) notes the idea of intra decentralization referring to the combination of decentralization and democratization for building strong relationship and interaction between municipal administrative bodies and citizens through improving decision making bodies and institutions at lower levels. According to the author, municipal decentralization in such context granted authority within a defined territory, responsible for lots of public tasks, taking aspects of political decision making bodies, responsible for service provision, merely independent to local authority but responsible for it.
According to Tegegne Gebre-Egzibher (2004), in Ethiopia decentralization has two phases of progression. The first phase of decentralization (1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001), as the writer noted, has shaped the central political system into federally structured administration regions, and focused on ensuring regional states' authorities and responsibilities of self-administration. The second wave of decentralization which was initiated in 2001 primarily focused on empowering local administrative units or weredas for managing and controlling their own resources through District Level Decentralization Program (DLDP) and Urban Management Program (UMP).
Hence, according to Gulyaniet al (2001), municipality decentralization in Ethiopia has become a recent phenomenon despite the federalized government with constitutionally decentralized regional states established more than two decades back. The authors also noted municipality roles in general and decentralized municipalities' functions in particular seem to be ambiguous and inconsistent: The institutional framework in which municipalities currently function is complex, ambiguously defined at all levels of government, and inconsistent across regions… the role of municipalities in the decentralization efforts is particularly unclear. Even the Regional Affairs Department in the Office of the Prime Minister, which has substantial overall responsibility for the decentralization process, has no formal link to municipalities. Gulyani et al (2001:12) Although decentralization in municipality governance brings more opportunities to community based participation and decision making in planning, implementing and monitoring municipal functions and tasks (Robertson, 2002;Solomon, 2008), a clear understanding of granted authorities and responsibilities and high level of commitment seem to be required from the governing bodies and stakeholders for effective implementation. This study, thus, focuses on assessing whether Debre Tabor decentralized municipality (one of the Amhara region urban centers) implemented in the way it is intended.
The role of decentralization in effective municipal governance has been well acknowledged in developed and developing countries, and they have been using it since 1980s (Gaule, 2010). In Europe, for example, an assessment was conducted on the implementation of municipal decentralization in three cities such as Bologna, Rotterdam and Birmingham (Ostaaijen 2008).
Using an evaluation criteria like localization (accessibility of services to local community, flexibility of making managerial and administrative decisions, devolution of power for making decisions on service delivery, and organizational change of culture for participatory decision making), the implementation performance of the three cities has been evaluated. The assessment result indicated that Bologna city of Italy became the best exemplary for proper functioning of decentralized municipal governance. The city had well established structure and comprehensive channels that discharged municipal services independently and efficiently.
In African context, an assessment of municipal decentralization implementation was also conducted in Tanzania with Morogoro municipality council (Lambeck, 2011). The study focused on one variable i.e., localization which includes physical accessibility and openness of services delivery. Using questionnaire, in-depth-interviews, focus group discussion and observation for data collection, the researcher concluded that the municipality decentralization was not effective in addressing the intended services. However, in Ethiopian context, few attempts have been made on implementation assessment of decentralization process in municipal administration though considerable number of research works have been done on decentralization of national political, administrative and fiscal areas (e.g., Oxfam GB, 2005 Concerning decentralized municipality experience, Adony Habtu (2011) attempted to assess public participation in "decentralized governance in Adi-Haki local administration in Mekelle City". Using questionnaire and interview for data collection, the study report emphasized the ineffective means of involving citizens in the decision process of service delivery though mere instances of consultation were made between authorities and some community representatives.
Mbedzi and Gondo (2010) also evaluated the efficiency and effectiveness of fiscal decentralization in revenue collection and management at Dangila Municipality located some 80 kilo meters away from Bahir Dar City, the seat of the Amhara regional state. The study used financial documents and questionnaire to obtain data, and the research indicated poor efficiency and effectiveness of revenue collection and expenditure mainly for poor organizational structure, working guidelines, planning skills and lack of awareness on tax payers. A recent assessment by Atlaw and Mohammed (2014) on the effect of urban municipality decentralization on poverty reduction showed positive results. The study used questionnaire and interview for data collection, and considerable improvements of income increment of participants and transportation service facilitation were reported as a result of the reform.
The aforementioned studies on municipality decentralization seem to focus on how decentralization increase or decrease efficiency and effectiveness of the municipal governance with some evaluative mechanisms. However, a closer analysis and assessment of the decentralized municipal entities in the process of implementation, whether an intended functioning of municipal roles and tasks are going has not been well addressed, mainly in our context. A few of the stated research work focused solely on community participation, poverty reduction or revenue management. Based on my reading, there seems not to have been a comprehensive analysis and evaluation of municipality implementation in Ethiopian urban areas.
This study, thus, focuses on assessing whether the decentralized municipality of DebreTabore has been implemented in the way it has been designed.

Aims of the Study
The main objective of this study was to assess the implementation of decentralization in DebreTabore Municipality. More specifically, this study had the research questions stated.

Research Questions
This study had the following research questions.
 What perceptions did the employees hold about the decentralized municipality implementation?
 How did provision of resources and facilities for implementation of the decentralization reform look like?
 How did the employees make decisions following the municipality decentralization?
 Were there possible relationships among the employees' perception of municipality decentralization, provision of resources and facilities and practice of decision making?
 Were there differences in responses of the participants on perception, input provision and decision making because of differences in background (e.g., gender, experience, position)?

Research Methodology
This research mainly focused on assessing the implementation of municipal decentralization in one of Amhara region town administrations. For this end, a survey research design was employed, as this design gave opportunity for addressing a large sample of individuals in a short period of time (Creswell, 2005). The research participants were some subjects selected from the individuals who were assigned and hired in the institution (Debre Tabor muncipality) for rendering administrative and management services to the public. Questionnaire (with closed ended) and semi-structured interview were employed for data collection.

Participants and sampling
This study was conducted at Debre Tabor Municipality administration located in south Gonder Zone. The municipality had about eighty thousand residents seeking administrative facilities and services. The administration of the municipality consisted of different departments such as infrastructure, service delivery, land provision, construction management, planning and greenery and investment promotion. There were one hundred twenty workers employed following the decentralized form of governance. Thus, this research involved forty-eight participants (40 %) out of the total population using and a mix of stratified and systematic random sampling as there were groups of workers serving in expert position, team/unit head and others. The sampling, therefore, addressed each forms of positions during the selection, and generally, this study considered 48 employees selected using stratified and simple random sampling.

Data Collection Instrument
The current research used a survey questionnaire for assessing the implementation of decentralized municipality of Debre Tabor. Detailed discussion on the instrument is given below.

Questionnaire
This study employed a self-reported questionnaire for addressing more participants concerning the implementation of decentralization. Using questionnaire as an instrument enables researchers to assess more individuals' performance and reflection about the things under investigation.
Besides, organization and management of the collected data could be a little bit easier when participants respond their feelings or ideas in the form of closed ended items. Therefore, questionnaire was used as one of the instruments for data collection.
The questionnaire was developed based on reviews of literature on muncipality implementation and municipality roles (e.g., AFTU, 2001;Cohen,etal 1999;Ioannidis, 2015). It had two parts.
The first part presented background information about the participants including gender, age, experience, education and position. The second part had a closed ended items in the form of likert scale (strongly agree = 5, agree =4, neutral =3, disagree=2 and strongly disagree=1) and frequency counts (always =5, usually = 4, sometimes = 3, rarely = 2, and never = 1) . The items were grouped into three thematic areas (perceptions on municipality decentralization (11 itemsexample: the decentralized municipality reform help employees develop more commitment for implementing the tasks and activities(strongly agree, agree, neutral disagree and strongly disagree), decision making practices (4 items, example : I make decisions on matters that arise from customers based on my line of duties and responsibilities in the decentralized municipalityalways, usually, sometimes, rarely and never) and provision of resources and facilities of decentralization implementation (4 itemsexample: In the decentralized municipality, the required offices are available for undertaking my duties and responsibilities -strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, and strongly disagree).

Procedures of data collection and analysis
The prepared questionnaire was first made piloted with 20 employees and a reliability coefficient

Questionnaire based data analysis
Data collected through the closed ended questionnaire were analyzed in terms of background information, municipality perception, resources and facilities provision, and decision making practices.   survey data in that all except one of the interviewees understood the decentralized municipality and had a reasonable level of acknowledgement of its roles (see section 4.1.1).  The overall decision making practice also indicates considerably good level (mean, 3.06).

Figure 4.2 Provision of resources and facilities for municipal decentralization
Conversely, the participants do not reveal fair amount of decision making effort on budget utilization and management (mean, 2.62). Interview data, however, disconfirmed such fair level of decision making practices that the survey participants reported here. That is, four of the interviewees noted considerable gaps on decision making practices mainly because of frustration and insincerity.

Background differences in municipal perceptions, resources and facilities provision and decision making practices
The possible differences in response to municipality decentralization in terms of gender, education, work experience and position have been presented one by one.

Discussion
The results of this study on the perceptions about the municipality decentralization implementation seemed to be fairly considerable. Evidences from interview data and a few responses of the survey appeared to reveal that the participants acknowledged substantially about the relevance of the decentralized municipality for good governance. This result tends to contract Ioannidis's (2015) study findings at Greek, where a substantial degree of dissatisfaction on the municipality decentralization reform was observed in the institutional actors.
Concerning the input provisions for implementation, the survey result did not reveal substantial evidence for the quantity and quality of the provision though reasonable amount of positive evidences were found from the interview data. Therefore, the theoretical assumption that claims Meanwhile, the decision making problems shown from this study seemed to contradict with the commonly assumed criticism that decentralization may create space for corrupting local actors by abusing their authorities (Crook and Manor, 1998). Nevertheless, the positive correlations among municipal decentralization, input provision and decision making practice of this research finding, seemed to correspond with the theoretical argument that claims the awareness of policy implementation, and the higher provision of resources would produce more effective implementation practices (Lameck, 2011;Ostaaijen, 2008).

Summary and Conclusions
Based on the survey data, the overall perceptions about the role of the municipal decentralization, appeared to be not significant though considerable level of understanding and acknowledging observed in four areas (controlling and managing designs, creating commitment, planning activities and using and managing urban land, and implementing plans) (see Figure   4. 1). Nevertheless, noticeable understanding and acknowledgement of the municipality's decentralization positive roles was revealed from the responses of the interviewees (see section 4.1.1). Concerning provision of inputs for the decentralization, the survey participants did not appear to respond on the quantity and qualities of resources and facilities provided though compelling evidences were generated from interview results that input provision has not been a question for employees in performing their duties and responsibilities. The survey data on decision making practices tends to reveal fair level of performance (see figure 3) though the data from interview failed to confirm it (see section 4.1.3). Besides, based on the data from questionnaire, considerably significant positive interrelationships were seen among the participants' municipality decentralization perception, input provision and decision making practice (see table 2). On course, there seemed not to find evidences for such interrelatedness from interview data.
Generally, the results of the survey and the interview could indicate four points. First, municipality decentralization perceptions were fairly noticeable on the participants but not significant. Secondly, the provision of inputs for the municipality decentralization did not appear to be recognized. Thirdly, decision making practices did not reveal significantly in the municipality decentralization. Lastly, not least, positive interrelationships seemed to be observed among the participants' municipal decentralization perception, provision of inputs and decision making practices.
Based on the aforementioned summary of results, the following conclusions are forwarded.
1. Considerable level of perceptions about the promises of municipal decentralization seemed to be seen on the participants. The survey data mainly on four issues of decentralization, revealed significant degree of understanding and acknowledgement of the positive roles decentralization could play in the municipality administration.