The Sustainable Cities Programme (SCP) has developed a simple methodology that cities may use for the assessment and monitoring of improvements in decision-making. The methodology uses indicators that have been designed to assess the participation of the various stakeholders in the different stages of the decision making process. Measured over a specific period of time, the indicators will reveal whether there has been any improvement in the participation of the various stakeholders in decision-making.

The participatory decision-making indicators are based on ratings provided by the stakeholder groups themselves. Each stakeholder group rates its own performance against a scale of 0 (totally negative appraisal) to 3 (totally positive appraisal). Four indicators are provided to correspond to the four decision-making process activities. In each instance, various questions are laid out to assist in rating the activity. The ratings of each indicator are recorded on a reporting sheet and charted on a bar graph that provides a visual analysis of the decision-making process.