Midterm Supporting Meaningful Engagement for Improved Accountability by Leveraging Digital Technologies (Implementing Social Accountability Framework II)

The Implementation of the Social Accountability Framework (ISAF) in Cambodia aims to empower citizens, strengthen partnerships between sub-national administrations (SNAs) and citizens, and leverage enhanced accountability of SNAs to improve local service delivery. The ISAF was introduced as a platform for coordinated action by The Government of Cambodia and Civil Society Organisations to operationalize the Strategic Plan on Social Accountability for Sub-National Democratic Development adopted by the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) on July 2013. The Strategic Plan and ISAF are important elements of the RGC’s broader democratic development agenda, as implemented through the second (2015-2017) and third (2018-2020) 3-Year Implementation Plans (IP3). This agenda, in turn, implemented in the context of the RGC’s national development vision, as outlined in the fourth Rectangular Strategy (2018 – 2023), which calls for the development of social accountability mechanisms in pursuing overarching national goals of growth, employment, equity and efficiency.

The overall objective of the midterm assessment is to assess the contemporary situation of impact groups (including women, youth, ethnic minorities and people with disability), their knowledge, degree of satisfaction with public services (including administration, health, education and waste management) and level of dialogue with local government in the old districts and the new districts at the middle point of the project to compare with the Logical Framework indicators from the start of the action.

Midterm respondents were chosen from key project participants: citizens, youth (aged 15 to 30 years old), local authorities/services providers (commune and district levels, healthcare centres and primary schools) and Community Accountability Facilitators (CAFs). A total of 892 respondents were interviewed for the midterm. Data collection was conducted with a team of 10 data collectors in February and March 2022.