Monitoring Government Follow-Through

Definition

Monitoring government follow-through involves tracking the extent to which policies, programs, laws or specific commitments are implemented. The focus is typically on executive branch institutions and actors responsible for providing public goods and services that satisfy citizen needs and interests.

Monitoring Purpose

This type of monitoring is a method for civil society to draw attention to the government’s responsibilities and provide information about whether progress is being made toward reaching the government’s stated objectives. It can also focus on the extent that “open government” practices are being followed or public-sector reforms are being instituted.

Examples of common monitoring government follow-through objectives include:

• Increase public awareness of the extent to which governments implement and enforce laws, policies and programs;
• Pressure governments to comply with and enforce decisions and policies;
• Increase inclusion and participation of marginalized groups in policies and programs;
• Increase implementation effectiveness and responsiveness;
• Increase transparency of government decision-making;
• Increase government accountability to legislators and citizens; and
• Strengthen good governance.

Some groups may only monitor government follow-through, while others may combine this type of monitoring with advocacy or awareness-raising campaigns focused on a sector (e.g., health or education) or an issue area (e.g., climate change).

Watchdog organizations may choose to monitor specific democratic governance dimensions, such as the level of transparency in decision-making at the national level, or the political space for civil society voices to participate at the local level. These initiatives can be an effective oversight method for civil society to prompt more responsive and accountable governance by determining if official decisions and actions have resulted in the promised changes. Issue-based organizations may choose to monitor government follow-through to track an implementation process and be prepared to advocate, if a desired change is stalled.

Monitoring government follow-through can work in tandem with other forms of monitoring, such as budget monitoring, expenditure tracking or shadow reporting. All of these efforts can also help build better working relationships with public officials and can foster more collaborative forms of governance.

Monitoring Dimensions

Government follow-through initiatives can target a wide range of local or national-level government actions, such as the execution of power-sharing agreements, post-disaster reconstruction programs, job-creation policies, environmental protection programs, local development plans, or constitutional reforms, among others.

Monitoring Compliance

One dimension these types of initiatives may monitor is compliance. Specifically, groups can monitor how well government agencies comply with the legislation and policies that regulate a process. A good example is an initiative that aims to monitor how well and how quickly the government is abiding by or upholding a right-to-information act, also known as “freedom of information” legislation.

Monitoring Priorities and Responsiveness

Monitoring the priorities of the local government, a government agency or the national government is another dimension of this type of monitoring. In these kinds of initiatives, civic groups gather the citizen or community priority issues and present them to the relevant government institutions. The civic groups then monitor the level of responsiveness of the target institution to the priorities and whether and how the priorities are addressed, e.g., priority issues are included in budget plans, target issues are made into public policies, and government actors provide explanations for why a specific issue has not been addressed yet.

Monitoring Effectiveness and Efficiency

Issue-based advocacy groups, in particular, are inclined to monitor the government’s performance as it relates to their priority issue or cause. These types of groups tend to monitor the effectiveness and efficiency of government follow-through. Initiatives that monitor these dimensions are also common after a national disaster or economic recession, where a large-scale government program is planned that involves significant public funds and diverse beneficiaries.

Because there are so many different government policies, programs and decisions at different levels of government, this type of monitoring is also the most diverse of all other types of political process monitoring.