Online guide
How residents, Local Development Committees and assessors monitor their entity’s budget, visit projects, engage elected officials and check that problems are fixed. Five phases, simple steps and ready-to-use tools.
Foreword
In a city or a municipality, residents see every day what is wrong: a tax collected without a receipt, a blocked drain, a stalled building site. The administration often learns about it late, and the public does not know where the money goes. This guide explains how to turn these findings into verified fixes.
It is for residents, Local Development Committees, assessors, civil society organisations, elected officials and the services of decentralised territorial entities (ETDs). It follows the five steps of the “Citizens first” cycle: take part in the budget, follow its execution and visit projects, check and publish, make the findings heard, then obtain and check corrections.
Integrity, here, brings together three requirements: accountability (answering for what you do), competence (doing it well) and ethical behaviour (doing it honestly, without corruption).
Glossary
- ETD
- Decentralised territorial entity: City, Municipality, Sector or Chiefdom, with its own budget.
- Local Development Committee
- Residents’ representatives who take part in the entity’s budget; CERC trains them in citizen monitoring.
- Budget hearing
- The public meeting where the entity presents its budget and residents express their priorities.
- Voted / executed budget
- The budget adopted for the year, then what was actually collected and spent.
- Assessor
- A trained person who answers GovCheck questionnaires for an entity or a project.
- SuperMonitor
- The person who reviews assessments before they are published.
- Questionnaire
- A list of simple questions (yes, partly, no, don’t know) on one topic: revenue, building site, school…
- Score
- A mark from 0 to 100 calculated from the answers to a questionnaire.
- Service request
- A report or request from a resident to their City or Municipality, with a reference number and a tracking code.
- Correction
- The resolution of a problem, checked on site or confirmed by the resident.
- Resolution rate
- The share of reported problems that have been fixed and checked.
Take part in the budget hearings
Monitoring starts before the budget is voted: know your entity and make your priorities heard.
1.1 Know your entity
Who decides, who collects, who spends? List the Mayor or Burgomaster, heads of service, elected officials, public bodies (SNEL, REGIDESO…) and the groups often left out: women, young people, people living with disabilities, displaced people.
On GovCheck The “My City” page shows each entity’s profile, its services, its official fees and its projects.
1.2 Train the Local Development Committees
CERC identifies and trains the Local Development Committees in the budget process and in citizen monitoring of budget execution.
1.3 Take part in the budget hearings
The committees and residents take part in the hearings to express the needs and priorities of their communities.
They then follow how their proposals are taken into account in the trade-offs and in the budget finally adopted.
On GovCheck The “Participation in budget preparation” questionnaire keeps a record of each hearing.
Follow the execution and visit the projects
Verified facts are the strength of monitoring: without them, nothing changes.
2.1 Compare the voted and the executed budget
Compare the revenue actually collected and the spending made by sector with the amounts initially voted.
On GovCheck Budget tracking shows the voted and executed budget by sector and local tax revenue, month by month.
2.2 Prepare a project visit
Gather what the project must display or provide: site sign, bill of quantities, contract, deadlines. Tell those in charge the purpose of the visit.
2.3 Visit and gather evidence
Check the progress, the quality of the works and their compliance with the commitments made. Answer the questionnaire, question by question.
Take geotagged photos of the works, never of people.
On GovCheck A project visit opens the project questionnaire, the building-site questionnaire and the one for its type of infrastructure (road, school, water…).
Check and publish the results
Published information must be reliable: that is what makes it credible.
3.1 Review before publishing
Every assessment is reviewed before publication. CERC checks and validates the quality of the information collected.
On GovCheck The assessor follows the status of their assessments in “My space”.
3.2 Publish what has been checked
Published results are open to all: the score of each questionnaire, the answers, the photos. Each ETD also has its own account to view its budget execution and its projects.
Make the findings heard
The goal is the solution, not the sanction.
4.1 Present the findings to decision-makers
CERC supports citizens in presenting their documented findings to the elected officials and public services concerned.
4.2 Highlight the gaps
Show the gaps between budget commitments and actual achievements, and make concrete recommendations to improve the management of public resources and the quality of services.
4.3 Follow up residents’ requests
Residents report a problem or request a service on the website or on WhatsApp. The right service receives the request and can ask for details.
On GovCheck Every request receives a reference number and a tracking code.
Obtain corrections and check them
Closing the loop: a finding only matters if it triggers a verified response.
5.1 Obtain a concrete answer
The entity’s authorities respond to the problems identified: completion or resumption of works, better revenue collection, redirection of spending or correction of the failures observed.
5.2 Check in the field
Corrective measures are followed up and checked in the field. For a service request, only the resident can say whether the problem is solved; they rate the service from 1 to 5 stars.
On GovCheck Each service has a results card: resolution rate, response time, residents’ satisfaction.
5.3 Start again with the next budget
The results obtained feed the next budget cycle, in an ongoing dynamic of citizen participation, transparency and accountability.
Tools
Tool 1 · Security and conflict
- Who might be bothered by the monitoring?
- What risks for assessors and for residents who report?
- What precautions (visits in pairs, no names, sensitive topics never published)?
Tool 2 · Map of the entity’s actors
- List each actor: role, power to act, interest in monitoring.
- Identify allies, decision-makers and possible spoilers.
- Note whom to contact for each type of problem.
Tool 3 · Request budget information
- Ask for the voted budget, the execution report, the contracts and the project deadlines.
- Make the request in writing, politely, explaining the purpose.
- Note the date and the answer received.
Tool 4 · The questionnaires
- Revenue, spending, transparency and access to information, participation in the budget, oversight and accountability.
- Investment project monitoring and building-site monitoring.
- Road and bridge, school, health centre, water and sanitation, electricity, market, public building, beneficiary survey.
Tool 5 · The building-site visit
- Have the bill of quantities and the contract been shared or displayed?
- Do the quantities of materials match the progress?
- Is the site fenced to protect the population, especially children?
Tool 6 · Prepare advocacy
- Goal: the precise change you want.
- Decision-maker: who can do it; allies: who can influence them.
- Message: short, based on facts, with a solution.
Tool 7 · Measure impact
- Resolution rate and response time of requests.
- Published revenue and gaps between voted and executed budget.
- Project progress and residents’ satisfaction, before and after.