February 2016 | by Daniel McLaren
If the general public is able to monitor the delivery of services, it can help hold the government to account and, ultimately, improve the quality of the services being delivered. But to effectively monitor services the public needs access to information.
This note explores what information the government needs to publish to enable the effective public monitoring of the delivery of food security through the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) program in South Africa. It documents how much of this information is produced by government and how much of what is produced is publicly available. Finally, it assesses how regular, comprehensive, and accurate the published information is. While focusing on the SRD program specifically, this note speaks to some of the opportunities and challenges associated with budget monitoring as they relate to service delivery priorities in South Africa more generally.