Community-based monitoring (CBM) is a form of public oversight, ideally driven by local information needs and community values, to increase the accountability and quality of social services or to contribute to the management of ecological resources. Within the CBM framework, members of a community affected by a social program or environmental change generate demands, suggestions, critiques and data that they then feed back to the organization implementing the program or managing the environmental change.

CBM aims not only to generate the appropriate information for high quality service delivery but also seeks to strengthen local decision-making, public education, community capacity and effective public participation in local government. Ultimately, CBM is a tool to facilitate more inclusive decision-making on issues deemed important to members of a community that incorporate increasingly complex aspects of social, economic and environmental factors.

CBM has primarily been used in the disciplines of health and ecology. Within the health field, CBM has been used to increase the quality and accountability of health services by enabling local people to evaluate and direct the health services available to them as well as hold healthcare providers accountable to program objectives. CBM of health services aims to promote decentralized inputs for better planning of health activities, based on the locally relevant priorities and issues identified by various community representatives. The most extensive exercise in CBM of health services is being implemented by the Government of India under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM).

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