Research Terms of Reference: “Does Citizen Monitoring Save Public Money?” in Northern Ghana

Introduction

Integrity Action and SEND GHANA are starting a new, two-year programme in March 2021 in which groups of citizens in Northern Ghana will be enabled to monitor the delivery of important infrastructure projects and essential services within their communities. As part of this programme, we wish to generate evidence on whether, and under what conditions, public money is saved through this citizen monitoring approach. We are now searching for a research team or research organisation to work with us in gathering this evidence.

Integrity Action’s and SEND’s long experience of citizen monitoring approaches tells us that such approaches have the potential to improve services like education, health or infrastructure. We have seen teacher absenteeism improve, facilities upgraded, and stalled construction projects completed, to name a few. However, we lack evidence for what these improvements mean in financial terms. How much public money is saved when a particular service or project is improved through monitoring? By what kind of mechanisms or pathways might that money be saved? Under what conditions is the money saved greater than the money spent on monitoring? Evidence like this could help build a compelling argument for the value of these approaches, and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on government spending makes this kind of evidence particularly important.

This terms of reference sets out the full details of this work. The deadline for responses is 25th January 2021 (end of day). We would like the selected research provider to work with the programme team throughout the
programme – this includes working with us at the beginning to devise an appropriate research methodology that complements, and blends well with, the citizen monitoring methodology.

The total available budget is 80,000 USD over the 2-year period. We appreciate that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic poses a challenge to data collection, but believe that there is still much that can be done if we are adaptive in our plans. However, proposals that require international travel will not be considered.