National Program for Sub-National Democratic Development of Cambodia

The National Program for Sub-National Democratic Development (NP-SNDD) is the RGC’s agenda for the next 10 years in the comprehensive and in-depth governance reform process of the sub-national administrations, which will also impact on other national institutions. The formulation of NP-SNDD reflects and confirms the RGC’s political commitment to the vision, policies and strategies outlined in the D&D Strategic Framework and the government’s commitment to implementing the Organic Laws on Capital, Province, Municipality, District and Commune/Sangkat administrations.

The NP-SNDD has been formulated while the RGC is strengthening the roles and responsibilities of institutions at all levels towards achieving good governance, development and poverty reduction. To achieve these goals, great efforts by all national and sub-national levels are required, as well as effective cooperation between them. In this reform process, there is a need for equal opportunity for all citizens to participate in local development and to demand better and more comprehensive public services to meet citizen’s needs, leading to poverty reduction and focusing on the most vulnerable groups, particularly the indigenous peoples, women and children. In this respect, the RGC’s goals for sub-national democratic development are to:

• Create a culture of local participatory democracy, accountable to the citizens;
• Improve public services and infrastructures;
• Bring about social and economic development;
• Contribute to poverty reduction. Programme Areas

Program Areas

This document describes the goals, objectives and scope of the NP-SNDD implementation framework by platform (or phase) and sets out the activities planned under each programme area designed to achieve sub-national democratic development. It outlines five programme areas as following:

1. Sub-national Institutional Development : The directly and indirectly elected councils at all sub-national administrative levels are the primary means for program implementation. The establishments of those councils are not only for dialogue / forum purposes, and the D&D Framework and the Organic Laws expect those councils to achieve concrete results in improving the quality of local people’s lives, starting with the poorest of the poor and the vulnerable groups. The SNDD principles require that the elected councils at all sub-national levels represent their own communities, and are responsive and accountable to their local communities for their performance in carrying out their functions. To achieve this mission, sub-national councils shall receive the necessary authority and resources, including human, financial and physical resources, together with legal competency in order to make decisions serving the local communities’ interests.

Therefore, the creation of sub-national councils significantly modify the lines of accountability for the existing sub-national administrations. The Organic Laws intended for sub-national councils to grow as a strong local foundation and to have autonomy, but no sovereignty.

Responding to these changed requirements, sub-national councils shall have clear administrative structures, systems, and procedures in order to become strong local governance institutions, contributing towards poverty reduction and sustainable development across the country.

2. The Development of Strong Human Resource Management Systems: The elected sub-national councils are composed of members from different political parties, and those council members would not have adequate skills and professions to perform all tasks. Furthermore, when more functions and resources are transferred to sub-national levels, the elected council members could not undertake all tasks and manage all resources by themselves. Therefore, the councils shall have qualified, competent and experienced staff to undertake functions on behalf of the councils and to implement the council’s decisions. The D&D Strategic Framework and Organic Laws require that the councils have their own permanent personnel to fulfill the council’s tasks, who in turn shall be accountability to the respective council. The Organic Law calls for the establishment of a personnel framework at sub-national administrations through the development of separate statute for civil servants at sub-national level under the Law on Civil Servant’ Statute of the Kingdom of Cambodia. The development of this personnel framework is a process linked with the transfer of functions and resources. This process of transferring personnel to the sub-national councils is complex and must be implemented with care. The NP-SNDD document has called for steps, phases and key activities in transferring personnel, adequately developing human resource management and development systems which ensure that there is no increase in the overall number of the staff in the country that could impact on the government’s payroll costs.

3. The Transfer of Functions and Resources: The provision of public services, materials/means and basic infrastructures is a crucial component in the sub-national democratic development. Councils of all sub-national administrative levels shall assigned functions, together with adequate resources, in order for them to be able to provide public services, necessary materials and basic infrastructures to their local communities. The transfer of functions and resources shall carried out in a transparent, coordinated and consultative manner according to plans, phases and appropriate rationales; and with minimum disruption of RGC and DP’s on-going operations. Effective provision of the public services is closely linked with the transfer of authority, bringing the handling of key basic public services closer to the people. At the same time, the effective provision of public services requires that elected councils, and appointed public officials who would undertake the functions have appropriate skills, competency and commitment. Effective provision of public services shall also ensure that local citizens have the right to participate in the process of making the decisions concerning the services which impact on their daily livelihoods; have the right to monitor and evaluate the performance of the elected councils and appointed officials; and, be able to assess the quality of the provided services. Therefore, the transfer of responsibilities for providing key and basic public services to subnational administrations; people’s participation in public administrations; local council’s capacity in the decision-making process to respond to the local needs focusing on poverty reduction, is core to the process of the sub-national democratic development.

4. Sub-National Budget, Financial and Property Systems: The D&D Strategic Framework and Organic Laws demanded that councils at each sub-national administrative level have adequate financial and property resources in order to be able to carry out their functions and responsibilities for responding to local citizen’s needs. For the councils to manage the transferred finance and properties with the highest transparency and integrity as well as a high level of accountability to the people and to the Royal Government, the Organic Law provided for the development of the Law on Financial Regime and Property Management at sub-national level, which ensures that the council will formulate, approve and implement its budget, with proper financial accounting, management of property and with internal and external audits on the council’s budget and finance in accordance with rules, systems and procedures. This fourth program area also describes the council’s needs in terms of the development of the 5-year development plan and 3-year rolling investment program which define their council’s visions for own territory’s development. Activities of the fourth program area defined in each of the platforms supports the council’s decision-making authority on their own plans, finance, budget and property in the response to their respective local needs in accordance with the principles of local autonomy determined in the Organic Laws.

5. Support Institutions for D&D Reform Process: The sub-national administration reform process under the principles of democratic development through D&D will impact institutions at both national and sub-national levels. Therefore to ensure smooth operation of this reform, a strong mechanism is required to coordinate institutions at both national and sub-national levels, for the NP-SNDD implementation. The coordination among institutions at national level is carried out in the process of reviewing functions, resources and responsibilities of the national ministries and agencies for the transfer to appropriate sub-national council(s) of basic key functions and resources directly impacting on the daily livelihoods of the local communities. In this process, existing roles and responsibilities of national ministries and agencies which cover policy and strategy development, as well as all sectoral program implementation, will be changed to development of policy, strategy and national standards on the transferred functions. To coordinate this complex and in-depth reform, the Organic Law called for the establishment of a permanent inter-ministerial mechanism to be the arm of the RGC for the implementation of the Organic Law, namely the National Committee for Sub-National Democratic Development, abbreviated as NCDD. The NP-SNDD has determined the roles and responsibilities of NCDD to coordinate and oversee the implementation of the NP-SNDD through close cooperation with the Council for Administrative Reform (CAR), the PFM Reform Committee and other sectoral reform mechanisms on ensuring adequate staffing, capacity, financing and other resources according to each implementation phase.

In conclusion, democratic development does not have an end, but it embeds a process of gradual progress through policy development, program implementation and lesson learning, with program assessment and review leading to gradual improvement.

Detail program is here (in Khmer) (in English)