Most governments are responsible for providing essential services to the people. Governments spend huge amounts of resources to provide services such as drinking water, education, health care and sanitation as well as electricity, roads and transportation. Citizens depend on these services for their security and livelihood.

Two of the public services that are important because of the crucial role they play in maintaining a healthy economically active population are drinking water and basic sanitation. In many developing countries, lack of these two basic amenities leads to spread of diseases and infections which neither the working population nor the respective governments can afford to burden themselves with.

In many places, the quality of these public services remains inadequate and unreliable. Governments have fallen short in their responsibility toward citizens. How might groups of citizens be proactive and demand for better services? How might progressive government officials use feedback from citizens to instigate internal reforms?

A tool, now popularly known as the Citizen Report Card (CRC), provides a possible starting point for groups of reform-minded individuals.

From a service delivery perspective the CRC can be an effective tool in measuring the accountability of the service provider to adhere to the standardsor norms or of provision. The citizen report card methodology as mentioned mainly collects user’s actual feedback on public services on selective indicators to make the provider accountable for any lapses or the poor condition of services. The commonly used indicators are access, usage, quality / reliability, hidden costs and level of satisfaction. Each of these indicators reflects on the performance of the service provider.