Citizen Engagement and the CIVIC Facility

Citizens play a critical role in advocating for transparency, holding public institutions accountable, and contributing to their effectiveness. They are also a source of innovative solutions to complex development challenges. Evidence shows that, under the right conditions, meaningful civic and citizen engagement (CCE) and civil society and social sector partnerships can strengthen governance, empower citizens, improve citizen-state relations, enhance public service delivery, and ultimately, contribute to more effective development and greater well-being.

Global research and practice have increasingly emphasized the need to make citizen engagement and civil society partnerships more strategic and effective. The growing complexity of policymaking and the failure to adequately address pressing global challenges—such as climate change, health emergencies, inequality, conflict, and violence—have prompted governments, development institutions, civil society organizations (CSOs), and citizens to rethink approaches to dialogue, decision-making, and collective action, ensuring these efforts are more meaningful and impactful. This shift reflects a greater focus on overcoming barriers to effective engagement and understanding what approaches work, under which conditions, and why.

The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer reports that 61 percent of global respondents express moderate to high levels of grievance toward government, and business reflecting a broader perception that existing systems are not sufficiently responsive to citizens’ needs.

This erosion of trust is accompanied by growing sensitivity to the quality and accountability of public finance, the effectiveness of service delivery, and the transparency of decision-making processes.

These dynamics have direct implications for the World Bank’s operational environment, underscoring the importance of strengthening mechanisms that deepen engagement, improve feedback loops, and reinforce institutional legitimacy.

CCE can be transformative in critical investment areas. For example, in the renewable energy transition, active citizen participation can accelerate the adoption of sustainable practices and local solutions, foster community support, and secure social license for green projects that otherwise might not be viable. Similarly, in last-mile efforts for health care and pandemic preparedness, engaging citizens can improve the responsiveness and effectiveness of health initiatives, ensuring that remote and vulnerable populations receive timely and adequate care and are willing and able to receive critical interventions like vaccines.

However, the outcomes of meaningful engagement are highly context-specific and depend on the willingness and capacity of both governments and citizens to engage. Social, political, economic, environmental, cultural, geographic, and gender dynamics all influence the opportunities for and scope of effective citizen engagement. Understanding these contextual factors and fostering enabling conditions are essential for achieving results, particularly in today’s global environment of shrinking civic space.

Renewal of the World Bank’s strategy for Civic and Citizen Engagement

In the current context of multiple global crises, the need and demand for deep and impactful CCE has never been greater. A new approach to CCE is required to address the climate emergency, persistent poverty, exclusion, and conflict and fragility, as well as to achieve the World Bank Group's goal to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity on a livable planet. The Evolution Roadmap specifically commits to enhancing citizen engagement, social accountability, and partnerships with civil society to ensure development impact, enhance accountability and governance, and evolve the institution's operating model.

The World Bank is operationalizing this commitment through its new civic and citizen engagement results indicator, as reflected in the IDA21 Replenishment Report (paragraph 21, 110, and Annex 12, 18, 19) to strengthen the quality and effectiveness of IDA. The new composite indicator, “Quality of Civic/Citizen Engagement,” will be included in the Organizational Effectiveness and Efficiency Dashboard, which is a component of the renewed Corporate Scorecard, to measure the World Bank's performance in CCE over time. Unlike the previous citizen engagement indicator that operated only at the project level, the new CCE indicator will bridge both the project and country levels, identifying good practices, and highlighting areas where more attention is needed.

According to A Strategic Review of Good Practices and Lessons Learned for Renewal of World Bank Support for Citizen Engagement and Social Accountability conducted in FY24, the World Bank has largely succeeded in meeting the corporate requirements outlined in its 2014 Strategic Framework for Mainstreaming Citizen Engagement. However, these minimal requirements do not represent an adequate benchmark for meaningful and impactful CCE. As a stronger, more strategic, systems-oriented and partnership-based approach to CCE is required, the strategic review identified the following strategic objectives:

Improve the quality and outcomes of project-level CCE;

Strengthen country systems for CCE;

Support enabling conditions for CCE; and

Enhance partnership and support for civil society.

To achieve these strategic objectives, an institutional support system for CCE that is fit-for-purpose (staff and resources) is needed.

The new CCE strategy will propose a systems-oriented and partnership-based approach that responds to the call for enhanced CCE and strengthened CSO collaboration, while also reflecting corporate priorities for simplification and delivery of impact at scale.

In 2025, the World Bank also launched CIVIC: The Civil Society and Social Innovation Alliance. CIVIC is a financing, knowledge, and partnership platform designed to connect civil society and social innovation to development delivery at scale. It structures and resources collaborative platforms that enable local sub-granting, applied learning, and problem-solving—linking social sector capability to government systems and World Bank–supported programs. By combining flexible financing, technical support, and convening, CIVIC helps translate locally grounded solutions into operational approaches that strengthen implementation, adaptation, and results across sectors and contexts.

The World Bank monitors and reports on the status of its efforts to achieve its citizen engagement targets on a quarterly basis for projects approved since July 2015. To date, the following progress has been made:

Citizen-oriented design: 99 percent of Investment Project Financing (IPFs) approved in Fiscal Year (FY) 25 had a citizen-oriented design, meaning, they had at least one citizen engagement mechanism included in the project design. This represents significant progress from the baseline of 60 percent in FY14 and reflects a clear mainstreaming of citizen engagement mechanisms in IPF operations across Global Practices and regions.

Beneficiary feedback indicators in the Results Framework: 98 percent of IPFs approved in FY25 included a beneficiary feedback indicator in the Results Framework, compared to the baseline of 27 percent in FY14. This demonstrates progress in mainstreaming beneficiary feedback indicators in IPF operations.

Reporting on beneficiary feedback indicators by the third year of implementation: 80 percent of IPFs approved in FY20 reported on beneficiary feedback indicators by their third year of implementation i.e., FY23, relative to the baseline of 20 percent of projects approved in FY14. The quality of citizen engagement tools is steadily improving: while tools such as stakeholder consultations, grievance redress mechanisms, and satisfaction surveys for obtaining citizen feedback on analyses, alternatives, and decisions remain the most common citizen engagement mechanisms in projects, the share of approaches that facilitate more intensive citizen engagement have increased recently for both beneficiary feedback indicators and other citizen engagement mechanisms. These include collaborative or participatory approaches to engaging citizens in project decision-making, as well as involving citizens, CSOs, and third-party monitors in the measuring, recording, and tracking of project results and outcomes to improve performance, promote transparency, and assign accountability.

Through rigorous impact evaluations, including randomized control trial (RCT) methodology, the World Bank is generating evidence on the impact of citizen engagement and social accountability interventions as well as lessons for enhancing impact in future program design. For example:

• In Indonesia, the World Bank collaborates with the government to improve education quality in remote villages through the KIAT Guru Project, empowering communities to hold teachers accountable by expanding access to information on educational outcomes. After one year, learning outcomes rose from 37% to 49% in math, and from 37% to 50% in language.

• In Cambodia, the Implementation of the Social Accountability Framework (ISAF) program—a government–CSO partnership to strengthen accountability and service delivery in 757 commune councils, 1,404 primary schools, and 605 health centers— significantly increased service provider transparency by expanding the accessibility of information on services provided, budget, and performance. The program also led to greater use of health centers and shorter wait times for services.

• Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, an  impact evaluation of the Ethiopia Social Accountability Program (ESAP) found that the program increased access to information, citizen participation, and citizen satisfaction with public service delivery. For example, survey respondents from ESAP target communities were 10 percent more likely to indicate that their local community can contribute to improving service delivery.

For good CCE practice cases from World Bank operations, please refer to Annex 2 of “Citizens at the Center: A Strategic Review of Good Practices and Lessons Learned for Renewal of World Bank Support for Citizen Engagement and Social Accountability”