Lessons from the CARTA Program in Nepal and Bangladesh

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed concerns about issues of governance, particularly public service delivery accountability. There is a growing need to identify and promote approaches toward building accountability that rely on citizen engagement. CARTA builds on the World Bank's continuing emphasis on supporting initiatives aimed at engaging citizens and citizen groups as a way to strengthen the accountability of governments to poor people. CARTA offers valuable practical lessons on program design and operation, establishment of local partnerships, and project management. This report summarizes the primary findings and synthesizes lessons from the varied implementation challenges.The Citizen Action for Results, Transparency and Accountability (CARTA) Program was a unique initiative designed "to enhance the development impact, sustainability and client ownership of pro-poor projects financed by the World Bank (WB), by promoting civil society organizations' engagement, experience and capacity to demand better governance." What made it unique was the feature that, to improve project responsiveness and results, the Government and World Bank agreed to complement the projects' internal monitoring and evaluation systems with independent third-party monitoring by communities with the assistance of CSOs under the CARTA program