• Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin
  • LOG IN
    • Austria
    • Bulgaria
    • Croatia
    • France
    • Greece
    • Italy
    • Poland
    • Portugal
    • Spain
    • Other countries
Monithon
  • Home
  • About
  • In the press
  • Civic monitoring
    • What is civic monitoring
    • For Universities
    • For Civil Society
    • For Policy Makers
  • Our reports
  • Italiano
  • Menu

Civic monitoring of public funding

What is meant by “civic” monitoring and why is it important to improve our cities and neighborhoods?

Civic monitoring is a form of participation in democratic life, through which citizens can oversee the use of public funds. Experts, journalists, activists, students or lay citizens can evaluate the progress, results and effects of public investments in their region, city or neighbourhood. The goal is to stimulate an informed public debate on public spending and offer collaboration to policy makers

Where to start?

To start the investigations, you need to know what, where and when is financed by public funds in your region or city. For this reason, Public Administrations (Local Authorities, Regions, Ministries, up to the structures of the European Commission) are supposed to share at least this minimum set of information, without which no transparency is possible.

Together with numerous other third-sector organizations, research centers, and universities, we ask that all data of the Administrations useful for civic monitoring (not protected by privacy) be published on the web. We mean open and reusable data, with details for every single funded project from the official, administrative monitoring, including the indicators and targets used to measure results. It’s also important to access to the documents and qualitative information on projects, policy strategies and procedures to understand who has made policy decisions on behalf of citizens.

What’s there to monitor?

Civic monitoring activities can be carried out in different ways.

Some civic realities help citizens make it easier to read and understand public data, for example through visualizations and infographics. Other groups aggregate and analyze existing data to offer assessments, raise specific issues or underline the need for greater transparency by public bodies. Certain organizations focus on specific measures or interventions by evaluating their progress over time and collecting new “civic” data that can be discussed with the Public Administrations. Some of these focus on data on procurement procedures to make them more transparent and prevent corruption.

All these approaches complement each other and contribute to the creation of ideas and suggestions based on objective data and evidence.

Our approach: supervise, evaluate, collaborate

The Monithon method, available to all, focuses on the participatory evaluation of the individual interventions (projects), creating opportunities for dialogue directly on the territories between citizens interested in the effects of the funding and the public and private actors responsible for carrying out works or services.

The individual project represents the ideal level of observation, with sufficient detail to concretely evaluate the results and effectiveness of public funds and stimulate the interest of local communities.

On each project, those who use our method collect new data and information through direct visits, interviews, questionnaires, or any other way deemed most useful.

This civic-type monitoring does not replace administrative monitoring, institutional mechanisms for verifying investments, or scientific evaluations, but has the objective of complementing public information with the point of view of the final beneficiaries of the interventions.

Discover how our method can be used by different kind of actors:

Universities Policy makers Civil Society

Follow the steps of civic monitoring:

Create a civic monitoring report

Monithon Europe E.T.S.
Via Casal Bianco 352
00012 Guidonia (Roma)
info@monithon.eu
CF: 94083340581

Privacy Policy

The methodology, tools and data produced by Monithon are published under the Creative Commons BY SA license.
You can re-use them by citing Monithon as a source and indicating any changes made. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

 

🤍 DONATE
  • Mail
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Mastodon
Scroll to top

This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

OKLearn more

Cookie and Privacy Settings

How we use cookies

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

Essential Website Cookies

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, you cannot refuse them without impacting how our site functions. You can block or delete them by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website.

Other external services

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds: