Following are the main areas where Social Monitoring can be undertaken to improve the outcomes:

• Budgeting
• Monitoring of public service delivery
• Poverty Monitoring
• Policy development
• Local Government Planning and Development
• Public grievances 

Budgeting:

The budget is a crucial instrument for realizing the goals of development, including the MDGs. Yet in most countries, citizens can neither participate in budget formulation nor access budget information. The need for and interest of civil society in budget formulation has risen sharply because of concerns about corruption, inefficiency in service delivery, and what is perceived as inequity in resource allocation. Social monitoring of budget helps to monitor the allocation of public resources, implications of the budget when formed, propriety and effectiveness of this spending process and the effectiveness of output/ service after the expenditure. Citizens’ monitoring of public expenditure and policy promises, would lead to greater empowerment, democratization of knowledge, and a change of power relationships in favor of the poor and excluded. The various tools employed in budget analysis are participatory budgeting, public expenditure tracking etc.

Monitoring of Public Service Delivery:

 Effective delivery of basic services such as health, education, water, and sanitation is essential to the well-being of all people.  Accessible, quality services contribute to social welfare and to the achievement of human rights.  Yet, widespread evidence shows that services are failing poor people in a large number of countries with negative impacts on human development outcomes.  In addressing the failure of services, one key point is that the failure of services is not just technical, it is the result of the lack of accountability of public, private and non-profit organizations to poor people. Empowering the clients can help overcome various weaknesses in public service delivery.  One such means to empower the clients is having poor people monitor service providers.

Poverty Monitoring:

There is a lack of systems for regular monitoring of prevalence of poverty and tracking changes in poverty levels or in its severity. Similarly the funds, which are spent for poverty reduction, are monitored only on the basis of expenditure. Thus it is difficult to assess the investment made for poverty reduction both direct and indirect which has implications for accountability, efficiency of resource use etc. Social monitoring of poverty and poverty reduction programmes can play an important role in diagnosing extent of poverty at the local level, determining the causes of poverty, formulating appropriate policies and program, identifying eligible beneficiaries and assessing impact of policies and programs.

Policy Development:

Macroeconomic policies play important roles in shaping citizens’ quality of life and, to a great extent, decide who gains and who loses in a society, even at the community level. These policies form the basis for a nation’s budget, its fiscal and monetary stance, its trade policies and exchange rates. Together they shape not only the economic, but also the social dimension of growth.

Social monitoring at policy formulation stage will ensure that priority needs of poor are addressed in policies and interventions. Policy is translated into action through allocation of resources to it within the annual budget of a country. So monitoring of budget can be a vital vehicle for civil society to monitor whether a policy is being implemented or not. Finally through social monitoring, the impacts of policy on the intended beneficiaries can also be identified

Local Government Planning and Development:

It is important to strengthen the local democratic institution as this provides an opportunity to promote direct democracy where accountability and transparency of the elected representatives is quite high due to close proximity of the institution and its representatives with the local community. Social Monitoring of the functioning of local governing bodies opportunity to hold the village level development functionaries of various government departments to account .The citizens can identify areas of concerns and build indicators for monitoring using their own locally adaptable terms and symbols.

Public Grievance Redressal:

The objective of a Public Grievance Redressal system is to redress public grievances in an effective and speedy manner. However, despite the increasing application of online grievance tracking systems, they often remain as routine bureaucratic systems where complaints are received and filed but never followed up.