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Abstract
The aim of this paper is to explore by means of selected
case-studies how official statistics have been used
by civil society organizations to hold public agencies
accountable for service delivery or for the effective
use of public resources. The report has three distinguishing
features: (i) the focus is on recent initiatives and
what can be learnt from them; (ii) an accountability
matrix is developed to provide a framework for presenting
the case-studies, and (iii) several case-studies were
selected as pairs with a common theme which allows the
experiences of each member of the pair to be compared
and contrasted.The methodological contributions of the
paper are (i) to distinguish between bottom-up and top-down
forms of vertical accountability in the public sector,
and between three types of societal accountability;
(ii) to classify CSOs according to the depth of their
statistical analysis and the level of spatial aggregation
at which they operate, and (iii) to summarise and integrate
all these analytical elements into a single accountability
matrix.
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