Social accountability tools areincreasingly recognized as a means of improving servicedelivery and governance in World Bank-supported projects.Social accountability is an approach that relies on civicengagement in that citizens participate directly orindirectly in demanding accountability from serviceproviders and public officials. Community scorecards (CSCs),the focus of this note, are citizen-driven accountabilitymeasures that enhance citizens' civic involvement andvoices and complement conventional supply-side mechanisms ofaccountability, such as political checks and balances,accounting and auditing systems, administrative rules, andlegal procedures. As a community-based social accountabilitytool, the CSC can be used to gather feedback from serviceusers and improve communication between communities andservice providers. By using focus groups and facilitatedinterface meetings, the CSC process provides service userswith the opportunity to give systematic and constructivefeedback to service providers about their performance. Italso helps service providers learn directly from serviceusers about what aspects of their services and programs areworking well and what aspects are not. This note aims tooutline a methodology in order to help task team's workwith clients to implement and scale-up CSC initiatives. Tothis end, examples from Bank-supported projects in which theuse of CSCs has resulted in improved service delivery are showcased.
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