Ghana’s Strengthening Accountability Mechanism (GSAM) project is a five (5) year USAID – funded project which focuses on strengthening citizens’ oversight of capital development projects to improve local government transparency, accountability and performance in 100 districts of Ghana. GSAM is designed to strengthen social accountability by improving information to CSOs to enhance their capacity to demand accountability.
The project seeks to improve accountability by enhancing mechanisms of bottom-up social accountability in MMDAs. This is to be done through increasing the quality and quantity of information available to citizens about the effectiveness of development projects funded by MMDAs capital budgets. Extensive CSO monitoring, the production of scorecards and public information campaigns will be used to demand improved development planning and execution. The Hypothesis of GSAM is that availability and accessibility of detailed information on local capital projects will improve the capacity of citizens to hold governments accountable. In cases where capital project development is poor, citizens can use this information to ask relevant questions in their quest to demand improvements from local officials.
The goal of GSAM is to strengthen citizen oversight of capital development projects to improve local government transparency, accountability and performance. The GSAM neatly dovetails into the Pillar 4 of the Government of Ghana’s (GoG) Better Ghana Agenda which outlines support for citizens’-based monitoring and evaluation of public policies and programs.
To achieve the above goal the project will be implemented towards the attainment of three specific objectives:
1. Increased availability of accessible information on MMDAs’ capital development project performance in 100 districts,
2. Strengthened CSO and citizens’ capacity to monitor MMDAs’ capital development projects in 50 districts, and Increased use of citizen-generated information on MMDA capital projects in 50 districts