These tools and mechanisms include:

• Conduct social audits – This is a means by which communities and CSOs measure the degree to which services and local development projects have the staff and inputs required under local law. ⁴ Public or social audits help measure the effectiveness of local development projects and their degree of inclusive participation.⁵  Given the politicized nature of SDG 16 targets, social audits are particularly effective for SDG 16 initiatives and help increase accountability for actors in promoting transparency and developing a culture of a right to information. They also can contain potential corruption and encourage local CSOs to present their grievances.⁶
• Facilitate community score cards – This is a mechanism through which citizens monitor the quality of community-based public services through focus groups – particularly marginalized groups–to measure the degree to which services are meeting the criteria defined by communities themselves.⁷ Communities and CSOs might measure their satisfaction or investigate how a service is performing for a particularly marginalized group. These results correspond directly to SDG indicator 16.6.2 (Proportion of population satisfied with their last experience of public services).⁸ A community score card aims to advance the quality, efficiency and accountability of services at the micro and local levels through mutual dialogue that engages both service users and service providers.⁹  It helps “both sides to come together, identify the reasons for feeble services and find out solutions for the problems identified.”¹⁰ 
• Conduct citizen report cards – These participatory local-level surveys are designed to help clarify community opinions about certain types of service delivery. A citizen report card provides a channel to provide feedback to government offices after evaluating citizens’ direct experiences, observations, and feelings through a participatory survey method.¹¹  Citizen report cards play a critical role in making sure that information is received about the services being delivered and are citizen- and result-oriented. Policy makers can listen to citizens’ demands to influence policy and budgets, transforming personal grievances and problems into collective action.

When deployed strategically, social accountability approaches to evaluate initiatives for peaceful, just and inclusive societies can lead to important impacts on development outcomes at the local level.¹²  Social accountability evidence facilitates constructive and evidence-based dialogue about citizens’ experience. CSOs can work within their community and with other organizations to monitor services across whole regions, aggregate evidence, and press for more systemic change. This type of “vertical integration” is particularly important for creating the kind of grassroots-to-global accountability needed in the context of the SDGs.¹³

Rather than replacing official sources, these approaches complement them and reveal patterns in public service and project delivery that official statistics might hide, particularly the perspective of marginalized communities.¹⁴ Given the complementary character of this type of data, the capacity of census bureaus should be strengthened to include it in official reports so that civil society can contribute critical evidence that helps improve decision making and accelerates SDG progress. ¹⁵ This requires greater investment from actors at all levels, particularly donors, implementation actors, and public officials, for greater investment at the subnational and grassroots levels to empower communities to support SDG accountability.¹⁶