Kofi Yeboah
Urban District Director
Physical Planning Department
Ningo Prampram District
Ghana

Biography
Kofi Yeboah has post-qualification experience in urban planning and management since 2002 with supplementary training in Urban Land Administration, GIS and ICT. For five years he was the project manager for the UMLIS pilot project in the Accra Metropolis. He is a professional member of the Ghana Institute of Planners and has worked on several urban projects with enviable success stories. Currently he is the Director in charge of Physical Planning in Prampram.

Abstract
Deployment of the ComCol Platform for Strengthening Social Accountability within Local Governments in Ghana

On account of unprecedented urbanization, Ghana’s cities and towns have been struggling to meet the growing demands for infrastructure and services. This is evidenced by the increasing incidence of urban poverty, the development of slums, and low levels of access to water, sanitation, and other services in urban areas. To enable cities better manage growing urbanization, more powers and resources are being decentralized, so ensuring that local governments are held accountable to central government as well as to their citizens becomes increasingly important. Yet, current accountability systems, both upward and downward, are lax. The unpredictability of resources makes it difficult for local governments to respond to the needs of citizens and undermines citizen participation opportunities that exist in the planning and budgeting process. Linkages between citizens and their assemblies similarly are weak. Monitoring service delivery issues, tracking local government response, and timely reporting on resolution of issues requires the deployment of a smartphone-based monitoring system supported by the ComCol platform. The rationale for the monitoring system is to enable Ghana's decentralization meet the dual objectives of strengthening accountability and addressing the challenges of urban growth, focus has been on improving citizens' engagement with urban assemblies and their perceptions of urban management. The objectives of deploying the ComCol tool are to: i) Provide real-time information in space for early detection of emergent issues; ii) Produce instantaneous status reports on implementation of development initiatives; iii) Increase transparency of issues and municipal response by disseminating information through a publicly accessible website. ComCol is an integrated smart-phone based platform that allows users to capture, store, retrieve, monitor, analyse, transform and display reports on specific real-time and space issues for responsive operations, management and decision making. The platform can be applied to a wide variety of purposes including: a) Monitoring and mapping service delivery failures (pipeline leakages; uncollected garbage, etc); b) Tracking district project progress and impact; c) Community-based mapping of urban infrastructure issues.