COMMUNITY SCORECARD FOR MONITORING AND EVALUATION

The Community Score Card (CSC) Concept

The Community Score Card is a monitoring and evaluation approach that enables beneficiary community members to assess service providers and torate their services/performance using a grading system in the form of scores.

It is an instrument to exact public accountability especially at the local/facilitylevel. It is used to:

  • solicit user perceptions on quality and satisfaction of facilities and to
  • assess transparency and general performance of the service provider

in order to pinpoint defects and omissionsboth in service and facility delivery so as to improve upon service delivery. Itreveals some of the knowledge gaps of the community members themselvestoo so that strategies would be found to fill those gaps.

Why using CSC?

The CSC method can be used to evaluate the performance of WSPs and the impact of WSP projects. There arwe a number of reasons to adopt the CSC method:

  • Water Service Providers (WSPs)and projects implemented by WSPsneed to be assessed to enable to improvetheir ownservices.
  • It is best to allow beneficiary communities themselves to do theassessment since they can talk from the real context and give authenticinformation about their own satisfaction than anybody else. (I would say that they are the recipients of the service/product)
  • The exercise alsooffers the WSP an opportunity to measure the level of satisfactionof its services to the beneficiaries.
  • It also challenges the service provider to look back andcorrect anomalies and defects.
  • In the end, community members areempowered (given a voice) to demand accountability from service providersthrough the use of this method.(very good)

Therefore the process of service/facility assessment does not end at thegeneration of the scores. The scores are further used to generate dialoguebetween the Water Service Provider and the beneficiary community in order toseek improvement in service delivery where necessary.

How CSC is conducted

Step 1: preparatory work

  • Create awareness on the CSC among the beneficiaries and WSPs
  • Collect supply side information(for example: …..)
  • Select participating users(how, which criteria; gender distance, family size, hh income?)
  • Select and train facilitators (company staff or independent facilitators)

Step 2: community mobilization and sensitization

  • The facilitator to inform the community/ beneficiaries and the WSP.
  • Preliminary session of both WSP and kiosk users to discuss CSC objectives, methodology, significance and expectations.
  • Help beneficiaries to choose general themes for the assessment of the WSP
  • Help the beneficiaries to decide upon specific indicators both standard and own beneficiaries indicators
  • Divide the participating beneficiaries into focus groups.

Step 3: community performance score card (Focus Group Discussions)

  • Meet with each focus group (including the WSP self evaluations one focus group???)
  • Let each group put scores according to the agreed upon indicators
  • Referring to the supply side information, one or more focus groups also does an input tracking record (comparing the actual with the expected)
  • Let participants give reasons for their scores
  • Let participants discuss possible solutions

Step 4: WSP self evaluation

  • The WSP to evaluate their own performance using standard and group generated indicators.

Step 5: interface meeting for both WSP and beneficiaries

  • Each focus group present its scores with the help of facilitators
  • Reasons for scores are discussed
  • Let WSPs react and give feedback
  • Let participants discuss possible solutions
  • Develop action plans

Step 6: dissemination

  • The report is compiled and disseminated (by whom?)

An example of standard and generated indicators

Standard indicators / Group generated indicators
Users / Operators / WSP staff
Taste of water / Distance / Handling of complains / Cleanliness
Colour of water / Business hours / Adherence to the contract
Availability of water / Cleanliness / Payment efficiency
Water pressure / Level of service
Frequency of fetching water
Time spent