What is a Social Audit?
Social audits are participatory and an ideal point of entry for citizen engagement in the political and decision-making process and the fight against corruption. It rests on the premise that citizens have the right and the desire to know what the government does, why, and how it impacts them, and that the government has an obligation to account for its actions and be transparent to citizens. When the actions and decisions of the government are watched and monitored closely, it puts pressure on the government to respond to the public’s demands and gives officials fewer incentives to abuse their power.
Social audits can be categorised into two types:
Compliance / Procedural Social Audit
This type of social audit examines legal compliance by reviewing documents and records to check whether they comply with the relevant laws and whether there are any administrative or financial irregularities. This can also be carried out by comparing public documents and records with other sources of evidence, such as interviews.
Performance / Substantive Social Audit
This type of social audit analyses the social impact of public institutions, services, and projects. The aim is to check whether public institutions are meeting their mandated functions or goals.
The main objective of a social audit is to monitor, track, analyse, and evaluate the performance of the government, thereby making public officials accountable for their actions and decisions.
It is distinct from other forms of citizen participation, such as advocacy, lobbying, protests, and public demonstrations, where the main purpose is to express citizens’ voices and to foster a more inclusive government. A social audit can therefore be considered a mechanism of public oversight; that is, the control exerted by citizens to track and monitor the government’s performance to ensure public officials are accountable for their actions and decisions.
The success of social audits and other social accountability initiatives generally depends on the capacity and willingness of both the citizens and the government. Therefore, social accountability initiatives should be conducted with caution, as success depends on the existing conditions. As such, it is important for those engaged in the social audit process to understand how policymakers operate. For instance, capacity, needs, priorities, and willingness differ between stakeholders, which requires strategic initiatives from auditors. Additionally, expectations from such initiatives should be realistic, as social audits and other social accountability tools cannot universally address corruption or lead to reform on their own.
