Citizen Engagement

Citizens play a critical role in advocating and helping to make public institutions more transparent, accountable, and effective, and contributing innovative solutions to complex development challenges.

Growing evidence confirms that citizen engagement can help governments achieve improved development results in creating links between citizen engagement and improved public service delivery, public financial management, governance, social inclusion, and empowerment.

Evidence also shows, however, that the outcomes of citizen engagement are context specific and depend on government and citizens’ capacity and willingness to engage collaboratively.  Social, political, economic, environmental, cultural, geographic, and other factors, such as gender dynamics, shape the opportunities and scope for effective citizen engagement.

Engaging citizens is especially important during times of crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, as the effectiveness of response efforts can often hinge on behavior change at the micro-level, building understanding of the need for local action is best done in dialogue and partnership, and timely citizen feedback can provide insight into how the crisis is affecting communities as well as enable real-time course correction in rapidly evolving situations. 

Last Updated: Apr 14, 2022

The World Bank Group (WBG) is committed to becoming a better listener and accelerating progress in the fight to end poverty and boost shared prosperity in a sustainable and inclusive manner. Engaging citizens and mobilizing communities in the process can help bring greater transparency, accountability, and social inclusion, thus improving development results.

The World Bank’s Strategic Framework for Mainstreaming Citizen Engagement in WBG Operations was developed in 2014 to more systematically mainstream citizen engagement in WBG-supported operations. The Strategic Framework defines citizen engagement as the two-way interaction between citizens and governments or the private sector within the scope of WBG interventions. This approach gives citizens a stake in decision-making in order to improve intermediate and final development outcomes.

The approach to mainstreaming citizen engagement in WBG-supported operations is guided by five principles:

• it is results-focused
• involves engaging throughout the operational cycle
• seeks to strengthen country systems
• is context-specific
• is gradual

The Strategic Framework builds on the WBG’s experience in multi-stakeholder engagement, citizen participation, and open and inclusive governance, as well as experiences from citizen engagement efforts around the world. The Framework assesses lessons learned, and outlines methods and entry points to provide a more systematic and results-focused approach for the WBG.

In practical terms, the World Bank’s citizen engagement commitment means that all Investment Project Financing (IPF) operations financed with IBRD loans or IDA credits must meet three requirements:

• Project design must be citizen-oriented, i.e., having at least one mechanism to engage with beneficiaries in the specific context of the project.
• Projects’ results frameworks must include at least one beneficiary feedback indicator to monitor citizen engagement throughout project implementation.  
• Projects must report on the beneficiary feedback indicator(s) by the third year of implementation.

Beneficiary feedback indicators can measure, for example:

• The extent to which citizens are making use of online platforms for providing just-in-time feedback and prompting responses to improve the quality of public services such as road maintenance, solid waste management, health services such as vaccine distribution.
• If consultation outcomes and beneficiary feedback are being integrated during project implementation, through the percentage of beneficiaries who feel that project investments reflect their needs, or beneficiaries’ satisfaction with specified project dimensions.
• Beneficiary collaboration in project decision making, implementation or monitoring, through the number of citizens and/or communities involved in planning, implementation and/or evaluation of project activities; community contributions to the total project cost; beneficiaries’ satisfaction with the collaboration process; the establishment of arrangements for community engagement in post-projects sustainability and/or operations; or the publication of findings of citizen-led monitoring.

The World Bank’s Citizen Engagement and Social Accountability Global Solutions Group (CESA GSG), within the Social Sustainability and Inclusion Global Practice (SSI GP) oversees the implementation of the Strategic Framework, supported by a network of citizen engagement focal points in each region and GP.

In 2018, the Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group conducted an evaluation of the results of the Strategic Framework. The evaluation found that the WBG succeeded in generating awareness and buy-in of the citizen engagement agenda among senior management and staff, who agreed that citizen engagement is a responsibility of the institution and a useful strategy to strengthen accountability in service delivery, mitigate risks, and anticipate problems. This change in mindset, whereby the value of engaging citizens is now encouraged across the WBG’s work, is considered a major achievement.

Last Updated: Apr 14, 2022

The World Bank monitors and reports on its efforts to achieve its citizen engagement targets on a quarterly basis for projects approved since July 2015.

To date, the following progress has been made:

• Citizen-oriented design—100% of IPFs approved in FY21 had a citizen-oriented design, meaning, they had at least one citizen engagement mechanism included in the project design. This represents significant progress from the baseline of 60% in FY14 as the percentage of IPF operations with CE mechanisms has totaled 99% or 100% from FY18 to FY21. This trend reflects a clear mainstreaming of CE mechanisms in IPF operations across GPs and regions.
• Beneficiary Feedback (BF) indicator in the Results Framework—98% of IPFs approved in FY21 included a BF indicator in the Results Framework, compared to the baseline of 27% in FY14. While the total percentage of IPFs with BF indicators hovered around 94 to 95% from FY16 to FY19, there has been a further jump to 99% and 98% in FY20 and FY21, showing a near full mainstreaming of BF indicators in IPF operations.
• Reporting on BF indicators by the third year of implementation—69% of IPFs approved in FY18 reported on BF indicators by their third year of implementation, compared to the baseline of 20% of projects approved in FY14. Also, if the projects that did not include BF indicators in the Results Framework in the PADs are excluded, the compliance rates are 80%, 92%, and 74% for FY15, FY16, and FY17 portfolio projects respectively.
• Trends in compliance to CE commitment at the design stage from FY15 to FY21 show further improvement in “thick” CE—comprehensive CE that is regular and continuous, combines multiple tools to enable collective action, and is embedded in country systems—with higher share of IPF operations using multiple BF indicators and CE mechanisms. Since FY16 more than half of the projects in each fiscal year have been using 2 or more CE mechanisms, and over 70% of projects have used 3 or more CE mechanisms in FY21; likewise, the share of projects that included 2 or more BF indicators have been increasing since FY18, and 58% of projects had 2 or more BF indicators in their Results Frameworks in FY21.
• Quality of CE tools is steadily improving—14% of CE mechanisms used in FY21 IPF operations were those for “thick” CE, such as participatory/community monitoring, and citizen/user membership in decision-making bodies. While CE tools such as citizen satisfaction survey, consultation, and grievance redress mechanism for obtaining citizen feedback on analyses, alternatives, and decisions are still most common, the share of other CE tools that facilitate thicker CE with higher intensity level have increased for both BF indicators and CE mechanisms, including participatory approaches to engage citizens in the decision making in the project, and involving citizens, CSOs, third party monitors in measuring, recording and tracking project results and outcomes to improve performance and fix accountability.

Through the use of rigorous impact evaluations, including Randomized Control Trial (RCT) methodology, the Bank is generating evidence of the impact of citizen engagement and social accountability interventions as well as lessons for enhancing impact in future program design. For example:

• In Indonesia, the World Bank supports the government to improve education service delivery in remote villages through the KIAT Guru. This project empowers citizens in remote areas to hold teachers accountable, and introduces an assessment which provides a low-stakes and frequent means to benchmark student aptitude by making learning outcomes more accessible to citizens. After a year of the KIAT Guru program, student learning outcomes improved from a baseline of 37% to 49% in math, and from 37% to 50% in language.

• In Cambodia, the Implementation of the Social Accountability Framework (ISAF) program was designed to as a partnership between government and civil society organizations aimed at strengthening accountability and the quality of service delivery in 757 commune councils, 1,404 primary schools, and 605 health centers covering 75% of Cambodia’s provinces, 62% of districts and 56% of communes. An impact evaluation found that the program significantly increased service provider transparency with enhanced availability of information on services provided as well as budget and performance data. Improvements were also found in the increased use of health centers, reduced wait times for service as well as more polite staff.

• An impact evaluation of the Ethiopia Social Accountability Program (ESAP) found that the program increased access to information, citizen participation and citizen satisfaction with public service delivery. For example, survey respondents from ESAP target communities were 10% more likely to indicate that their local community can contribute to improving service delivery.

Last Updated: Apr 14, 2022

In preparation of the Strategic Framework, an Expert Advisory Council (EAC) was formed to guide its development and implementation. The EAC continues to meet in order to advise on ways to strengthen the implementation of citizen engagement activities. The members of the Council – experts from civil society, academia, government, private sector, foundations, and development partners – were selected based on their knowledge, experience, and ability to represent a range of global and country perspectives.

CSOs are key actors and the Bank has historically benefited from different types of partnerships with them, engaging them operationally to improve development outcomes, and eliciting their input into Bank policies and programs. An important channel for engaging CSOs is the Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA), established by the WBG Board in 2012. The GPSA aims to expand opportunities for civil society organizations to work together with their governments to solve governance problems, especially in the delivery of services, and to improve development outcomes using social accountability mechanisms including citizen feedback. Some 54 countries have opted into the GPSA, which has supported over 32 operations in 40 countries. It provides grants to CSOs and supports them with capacity-building support, along with monitoring and evaluation, knowledge sharing and learning. The GPSA’s Global Knowledge Platform is a repository of diverse knowledge resources for social accountability practice, and a source of knowledge sharing and joint learning as well as practitioner networking. Building on its experience of the past eight years, the GPSA is leveraging the lessons learned to support coalitions of CSOs to provide tailored responses during the COVID-19 pandemic.