Organizations in the field of governance carry out diverse work – including research, capacity building, and advocacy – that contribute to essential outcomes like greater openness, accountability and equity. However, the complexity of the challenges that organizations are trying to overcome are inherently difficult to measure. As a result, organizations that are doing powerful and critical work may not be able to see their progress, leverage their achievements in advocacy and further activities or change course when they are not achieving their intended outcomes. The Fiscal Governance Indicators project, led by R4D and supported by the Open Society Foundations, was designed both to identify existing indicators and to develop and test new tools to help organizations measure their progress on these challenging outcomes.
While the gaps in measurement are significant, we uncovered many existing resources for organizations seeking to measure their progress toward outcomes related to governance, policy changes and narrative changes as part of our formative research. The result of this research has been compiled into a new resource, entitled Measuring Governance, Advocacy, and Power, that brings together existing indicators, tools, and indices that may be useful to practitioners responsible for the measurement of outcomes in the field of governance, advocacy, and power in an easily accessible and filterable format.
Organizations interested in exploring this resource can review the Framing Document (available for download) which provides an overview of the indicators, tools, and indices compiled, including how these are organized and how they can be used. The database itself (Indicators, Indices, and Tools) can then be searched and reviewed for relevant tools and measurement techniques.
Image credit: Carlos Muza from Unsplash
