While public spending has the potential to directly improve the daily lives of the poor, in practice, its impact is limited by issues of inefficiency, inequity, and accountability. The Transparency and Accountability Program’s response to this problem is to empower civil society organizations (CSOs) to monitor and improve the quality of public spending and service delivery. TAP supports research and advocacy projects designed and led by CSOs by providing technical support and opportunities for learning by doing, peer learning, and the development of partnerships.

The Challenge
No government action has the potential to improve the daily lives of poor people more than the budget. However, studies repeatedly fail to find a significant link between public spending levels and human development indicators. A major reason for this disconnect is that public spending is often plagued by inefficiency, inequity, and insufficient accountability. Funds are misallocated, there are delays and leaks in resource flows from the government to facilities, and resources are used inefficiently at the facility level. While government officials are tasked by citizens to ensure that these inefficiencies do not occur, policymakers are often not as effective as they should be for a myriad of reasons, ranging from lack of political will to insufficient resources.

The Opportunity
The Transparency and Accountability Program’s response to this problem is to empower civil society organizations (CSOs) to monitor and improve the quality of public spending and service delivery. TAP focuses on CSOs because they have clear advantages in accountability work:          

• They are on the ground  and can monitor in an ongoing fashion;
• They speak the local language, and understand the national, regional, or local context;
• As citizen organizations, they have clear incentives to drive positive change;
• Unlike international organizations, they can focus on specific programs or spending issues, and offer practical solutions.

Our Work
TAP’s competitive grant program develops CSOs’ capacity to monitor and improve public spending and service delivery by supporting research and advocacy projects designed and led by the CSOs. In their projects, organizations use social accountability tools, including Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys, Quantitative Service Delivery Survey, and Citizen Report Cards to identify important issues in public spending and service delivery and to advocate for improvements. TAP’s capacity building program emphasizes four key elements:

• Learning by doing: CSOs develop their interest, capacity, and expertise in expenditure monitoring, analysis and advocacy as they carry out their TAP-supported projects.
• Peer learning: Through high-impact engagement, TAP facilitates knowledge-sharing and ensures that organizations learn from each other’s rich and diverse experiences and expertise.
• Technical support: TAP provides technical resources and training to support completion of the work both during workshops and throughout the program.
• Partnerships: TAP helps CSOs forge concrete partnerships with stakeholders including government officials, World Bank staff, and other non-governmental organizations.

TAP is supported by funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. 

Our Impact

Since 2006, TAP has strengthened the capacity of 44 CSOs in 26 low- and middle-income countries to better hold their governments accountable and promote improvements in social sector public spending and service delivery. In addition, TAP has spurred policy improvements, the development and dissemination of better monitoring tools, increased the quality and amount of work that CSOs do on transparency and accountability issues, increased CSO credibility which can lead to more sustainable funding for this work, and improved relationships with stakeholders.  

• Center for Democratic Development (CDD), Ghana
• Laboratoire Citoyennetés, Burkina Faso
• Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE), Uganda
• Transparency Rwanda (TR), Rwanda
• Uganda National Health Consumers/Users Organization (UNHCO) and the Coalition for Health Promotion and Social Development (HEPS),Uganda

• Action Group for Health, Human Rights and HIVAIDS (AGHA), Uganda
• Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights (ARHR), Ghana
• Association des Femmes Africaines Face au Sida (AFAFSIBF), Burkina Faso
• Choice Ghana, Ghana
• Family Care International-Kenya, Kenya
• Pathfinder International, Tanzania
• Réseau Jeunesse, Population et Développement du Sénégal (RESOPOPDEV), Senegal
• The Future In Our Minds (FIOM Rwanda), Rwanda
• Uganda Network of AIDS Service Organisations, Uganda
• WaterAid in Uganda, Uganda 

Examples of Policy Improvements

• Improving Policy in Guatemala
  Centro de Investigaciones Económicas Nacionales (CIEN) in Guatemala. In completing an expenditure tracking study in 30 primary schools, CIEN found widespread delays in the delivery of student textbooks and determined that these delays could be explained by the overlap of the school and fiscal years. CIEN provided evidence of delays to Ministry of Education officials and recommended that the start of the school year be moved from January to February. In December of 2008, the Minister of Education adopted CIEN’s recommendations, allowing students across the country to have supplies at the start of the school year.
• Increasing Teacher Quality in Ghana
  Center for Democratic Development (CDD) in Ghana.  After tracking teacher absenteeism through unannounced visits to schools in Ghana, CDD established that nearly half of teachers were regularly absent from classes.  CDD further found that simple measures such as relocating teacher training programs and rescheduling pay days could cut down on such absenteeism. The Ghanaian Education Service, at the behest of the TAP-supported CSO, has now adopted and scaled up these approaches nationwide.
• Making Essential Medicines Available in India
  Consumer Unity and Trust Society (CUTS) in India.  After training unemployed youth to track common problems in rural health clinics in the state of Rajasthan, CUTS found widespread instances of drug stock outs in pharmacies and health facilities, and of absenteeism in health clinics, especially among doctors and medical officers.  Working with other CSOs, the organization arranged to have standard drug lists posted in each health facility and publicized staff absences from clinics as a way of applying pressure for better performance by the government health department.
• Ensuring Secondary School Students can Afford School in Kenya.
  Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (IPAR) in Kenya.  While tracking how funding was being used for the government-supported secondary education scholarship fund in Kenya, IPAR identified that much of the well-intentioned money was being wasted because it was going to students who were not eligible for the fund, no longer in school, or already getting full scholarships from private sources.  IPAR worked with the government and private scholarship providers to improve communications and change policies so that students who really need the scholarships are able to receive them.