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Fung, Archon

The Transparency for Development (T4D) project was launched in 2013 to try to answer these challenging questions and to make sense of a highly mixed evidence base. Ultimately, we sought to design research that could provide useful and actionable guidance to policymakers, donors, and practitioners alike seeking to improve the effectiveness of their work.

This paper provides insight into community designed and led actions in Indonesia and Tanzania that were prompted by Transparency for Development (T4D), a six-year research project that explores whether, how, and in what conditions “transparency and accountability” or “social accountability” programs improve maternal and newborn health care. We find that all communities participating in the T4D program planned social actions, with the vast majority completing at least one action. We also find that the focus of the actions was diverse in nature, though participants in nearly every community planned at least one action aimed at educating members of the community. We compare actions designed in Indonesia to those in Tanzania and find a number of similarities and differences in the types of actions designed and whether the actions were completed. When analyzed from a social accountability lens, we find three trends. Firstly, the actions were overwhelmingly collaborative in nature. Secondly, the majority of the actions were short route, meaning they targeted the health facility or provider directly, rather than government officials higher up the accountability chain. Finally, when classified by accountability “type” we find that more than half of communities took a self-help approach, with only about a quarter pursuing solutions through social accountability channels.