Recent decades have seen vast expansions of public health services across much of the developing world. But the quality of these services is often lacking, limiting their ultimate impact on the world’s poor. Transparency and accountability (T/A) techniques—such as social audits, public expenditure tracking surveys, citizen report cards, absenteeism studies, and community scorecards—are increasingly seen as one potential solution to some of these problems in that they allow communities to identify breakdowns and hold responsible agents or decision makers to account. Yet the evidence about the effectiveness of these interventions is frustratingly mixed. Further, evidence on successful interventions provides few insights into why these interventions worked, what aspects of the context played a role, and whether they truly empowered poor communities or were largely irrelevant to the deeper problems of power inequity, institutional failure, or social conflict that often foster slow and uneven development.

The Opportunity

A major opportunity exists to develop a more nuanced and action-oriented understanding of whether and in what context T/A interventions work – and to provide evidence that can be useful both to academics and to those working on the ground to improve health, accountability, and citizen participation. Specifically, such evidence could be used to:

• Provide CSOs and practitioners with actionable information about intervention design features that are more and less effective in different contexts;
• Reveal information for donors about T/A interventions that have a high potential for impact on health and other development outcomes;
• Provide evidence for health sector experts and policymakers regarding whether T/A practices can impact health outcomes and how to undertake T/A work to strengthen health service delivery; and
• Highlight research lessons to motivate the research questions and agenda of the next generation of academics and others undertaking research in the areas of transparency, accountability, and community participation.

Featured Resource – Transparency for Development

Read more about the Transparency for Development Initiative

T4D Overview

Our Work

The Transparency for Development (T4D) project (2013-2019) was designed to investigate the questions of whether well-designed T/A interventions improve health outcomes and under what conditions and to generate actionable evidence for practitioners, researchers, and other stakeholders working to improve health, accountability, and citizen participation.

R4D — in partnership with the Harvard Kennedy School and local partners in five countries (Ghana, Indonesia, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Tanzania_ — designed, piloted, and rigorously evaluated a series of T/A interventions across several countries and contexts carefully selected to allow maximum potential for producing generalizable results about whether, where, and why T/A interventions improve development outcomes.

Our Results

The results from the Transparency for Development project reveal the complex and challenging nature of designing transparency and accountability for better health while still highlighting important potential pathways for better outcomes:

• We found that the simple community scorecard implemented in two countries (Indonesia and Tanzania) did not lead to statistically significant improvements in the maternal and newborn health outcomes, including a majority of intermediate outcomes related to service quality and utilization.
• However, many communities that participated in the program designed and completed diverse and relevant actions to seek improvements in healthcare, suggesting that these actions were not enough to translate to health improvements.
• The program also led to improvements in the self-efficacy of many participants, especially in Indonesia.
• Finally, an adapted community scorecard that included the engagement of subnational government champions showered positive evidence of achieving concrete health changes in two of three countries in which it was piloted (Ghana and Sierra Leone).

Each of these results is explored in more detail in T4D publications, linked below.

The project is generously funded jointly by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the U.K. Department for International Development, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and is brokered under the Transparency and Accountability Initiative.

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Experts from the Results for Development-led EdTech Hub will participate in the following sessions:

1. The case for locally driven implementation research and the shift it demands from funders

A panel session, chaired by the BE2 Secretariat, exploring the role of locally led implementation research in scaling programs and driving sector-wide learning. Speakers, including Verna Lalbeharie, R4D Managing Director and EdTech Hub Executive Director, will showcase digital technology in implementation research and discuss how funders can adopt flexible, long-term models to support local capacity and innovation better.

• Date: Saturday, March 22
• Time: 2:45 – 4:00 p.m.
• Location: Palmer House – Third floor, Salon 6 

2. Is the tone changing on uses of technology in education? The 2023 GEM report one year on

In this session, Verna Lalbeharie, Executive Director of EdTech Hub, will share key insights on embedding evidence-based decision-making in government EdTech policies.

The presentation will highlight three major research studies on teacher training in Tanzania, digital personalised learning in Kenya, and data-driven teacher allocation in Sierra Leone. Closing with a practical framework for leaders, this session will help researchers, policymakers, and implementers apply the latest GEM report recommendations to their work.

• Date: Sunday, March 23
• Time: 2:45 – 4:00 p.m.
• Location: Palmer House – Third floor, Salon 9

3. The impact of tailored, rapid-response technical support on EdTech policy – evidence from the EdTech Hub’s Helpdesk

Since 2019, the Helpdesk has responded to 200+ requests across 60+ countries, shaping national EdTech strategies and policies. This panel will unpack key lessons from the Helpdesk’s work and explore its impact on national and regional EdTech plans across diverse contexts.

R4D Global Education Associate Director Jessica Lowden dives into the technical assistance component of the Helpdesk and how it has been valuable in addressing education technology policy questions.

Associate Director Arjun Upadhyay presents outcomes from our work in Supporting UNICEF Regional Digitalization plans for ECA and LACRO.

Senior Program Officer Sharanya Ramesh Vasudevan presents on EdTech Hub’s work in Sierra Leone supporting the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education and the Teaching Service Commission in developing a National Digital Learning Strategy. The presentation will focus on Sierra Leone’s EdTech landscape, the process and framework used to engage various stakeholders in Sierra Leone and lessons learned.

• Date: Monday, March 24
• Time: 9:45 – 11:00 a.m.
• Location: Palmer House – Third floor, Salon 9

4. The impact of tailored, rapid-response technical support on EdTech policy – evidence from the EdTech Hub’s Helpdesk

Envisioning Education in a Digital Society, the CIES 2025 conference theme, is inspired by rapid transformations taking place due to technological advancements (e.g., generative artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and connectivity technologies) that are reshaping our daily lives, the future of work and our society — all of which have profound impacts on education.

These advancements bring complex challenges, including adopting technology in educational settings, ethical concerns, and the new digital divide that technologies can create. Moreover, the growth of connectivity and the widespread use of devices and digital applications are pushing forward digital transformations in education at a rapid pace.

In this session, the panelists — including Jessica Lowden — will explore three topics to provoke conversations on the latest trends, practices and challenges related to technology in comparative international education. Three topics ground this conversation: First, what is technology’s role in shifting and changing local culture? Second, how does science inform teaching and learning, and how can technology equalize the playing field? Third, how should technology guide educational changes?

• Date: Monday, March 24
• Time: 11:15 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
• Location: Palmer House – Fourth floor, Grand/State Ballroom

5. Exploring digital technologies to enhance the inclusion of out-of-school children

Program Officer Rebekka Flam will present on leveraging existing technology in low-resource settings to support learning, as part of an EdTech Hub panel on enhancing the inclusion of out-of-school children in Southeast Asia.

• Date: Tuesday, March 25
• Time: 2:45 – 4:00 p.m.
• Location: Palmer House – Clark 7

The post R4D at the 2025 Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) Conference appeared first on Results for Development.

I spent a week in India with what we call a ‘learning check’ centered on the implementing partners, helping them come up with their own ideas and improve them, and using our data to see how it did or did not corroborate their own experience.”

Isabel Krakoff has three years of experience in international development research, predominately on education initiatives across Africa.

At Results for Development, Ms. Krakoff is a senior program associate working on R4D’s evaluation and adaptive learning approach. She has analyzed data for education projects in India and Sierra Leone, visiting both countries for presentations, workshops and to conduct series of interviews and focus groups.

In Sierra Leone, Ms. Krakoff has been involved with an effort around reading improvement that analyzes programs like reading clubs that meet before the start of school, with groups of students designated “helping” or “rising” readers with a mix of activities over the week. The combination of qualitative and quantitative data Ms. Krakoff and her colleagues have assembled will inform future changes to the program and help determine whether it can be taken to scale throughout Sierra Leone and in other countries. In India, Ms. Krakoff’s work has involved community-based partners in health and the schools assessing the value of a mobile application to promote reading, and measure reading skills, in young children.

Early in her career, Ms. Krakoff contributed to an evaluation of the MasterCard Foundation’s Scholars Program, collecting and analyzing data from program alumni about their experiences and from implementing partners regarding their recruitment and selection processes. Before joining R4D, Ms. Krakoff worked at Mathematica Policy Research on analysis and reporting.

Ms. Krakoff holds a BA in world politics from Hamilton College. She is working towards a master’s degree in international affairs from The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. She speaks English and French.

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This set of reports and tools was developed as part of a new initiative, led by Results for Development and supported by the World Bank, to contribute new evidence to this field. The Governance & Citizen Engagement practice at R4D designed and tested a tool that can be adapted and used to estimate the costs of a variety of open government programs in different countries.  The methodology developed through this initiative represents an important step toward conducting more sophisticated cost-benefit analyses – and ultimately understanding the true value – of open government reforms, insights that have been sorely lacking in the open government community to date.

The result of this initiative includes the following resources and analytical products:

• A detailed and comprehensive Framework and Methods for costing various types of open government reforms;
• Case Studies of applying that Framework and Methods to two real-life open government programs, the ProZorro e-procurement platform (Ukraine) and a national government Open Data Program (Sierra Leone);
• A Costing Tool and Manual (in the form of a series of interlinked spreadsheets) that can be directly utilized by those interested in conducting costing analyses of additional open government programs on their own; and,
• A Comprehensive Report that compiles the framework and methods, case studies, costing tool description, and conclusions from the overall initiative.

All of these resources are available to download using the links below.

Learn about the new costing method for open government initiatives:

• Framework & Methods report

Understand the cost estimates for specific open government initiatives:

• ProZorro Case Study (Ukraine)
• Open Data Program Case Study (Sierra Leone)

Undertake your own costing analysis of an open government initiative:

• Costing Toolkit
• Costing Toolkit Manual
• Costing Toolkit Example

Learn about everything and how it all fits together:

• Full Priceless Report
• Priceless Brief

The post Priceless? A New Framework for Estimating the Cost of Open Government Reforms appeared first on Results for Development.

Prior to joining R4D, Ms. Chhan was a program associate at a philanthropic consulting firm and a community health volunteer in Sierra Leone. During her time in Sierra Leone, she worked at a community health clinic to support the nurses and chief health officer with daily registers, data management, and health talks on malaria, nutrition, and Water and Sanitation/Hygiene (WaSH). In addition to supporting the clinic, she worked with community health workers doing outreach and immunization campaigns. At the philanthropic firm, she supported a portfolio of advocacy-based projects with a combined revenue of more than $25 million.

Ms. Chhan graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a degree in public health and political science. She speaks Khmer, Mandarin, and Krio.

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