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Community Based Performance Monitoring (CBPM): Empowering and Giving Voice to Local Communities
2007
Thindwa J, Edgerton J & Forster R
World Bank Social Development Department (SDV)
Community Based Performance Monitoring (CBPM) was developed in The Gambia with support from the World Bank as one element in its efforts to help improve governance and enhance development outcomes through social accountability. Building on the Community Scorecard Process developed by CARE International in Malawi, CBPM incorporates enhanced focus group methodologies developed in Sierra Leone. CBPM was piloted in the Gambia, and has been being scaled up nationally to facilitate participatory monitoring of The Gambia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy, and has recently been introduced to Uganda.
CBPM enables local communities to identify gaps and constraints and negotiate reforms in the delivery of services such as primary schools and health dispensaries. Information on the quality of service provision is generated through the use of structured focus group interactions with user groups as well as with service providers. Feedback from user groups to service providers is almost immediate. Assessments of the current status of service delivery, as well as actions to be taken to correct the situation, are arrived at through mutual dialogue during an Interface Meeting. The community also tracks inputs by comparing actual facility assets and supplies against entitlements. The approach promotes community empowerment and is also used as an information and advocacy tool by aggregating community-generated data across multiple CBPM ‘community gatherings’. The paper first presents the origins and attributes of the CBPM approach as a modified form of the Community Score Card Process. The CBPM methodology is outlined, and the experiences to date with the CBPM approach in The Gambia and Uganda are described. The paper reviews a number of ongoing strategic and operational lessons and challenges, and the potential for adaptation and scaling-up of the CBPM approach. In The Gambia, the approach is being broadened geographically and in terms of sectoral coverage, and linked with a concurrent Citizen Report Card approach. CBPM programs sponsored by World Vision are now being planned for Uganda, Brazil, India and Tanzania. The paper concludes that the Community Score Card approach, and the derivative CBPM approach, are powerful and flexible instruments to promote social accountability in the delivery of basic services to poor communities, and thus to improve the achievement of pro-poor development outcomes.
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