ABOUT US
IDS works to improve development programming and maximize development impact by strengthening the role of civil society as a strategic partner in development. Backed by extensive experience and strong evidence, we believe that engaging civil society organizations (CSOs) enables development initiatives to become more effective, responsive, sustainable, and ultimately impactful.
CSOs can play several critical roles within the development ecosystem. They serve as trusted intermediaries between citizens and governments, helping bridge divides, facilitate dialogue, and strengthen institutional trust. They are also important drivers of social innovation, with the flexibility to pilot, adapt, and refine new approaches before supporting governments to scale successful solutions. In addition, CSOs are uniquely positioned to reach marginalized and last-mile populations, including people excluded from public services because of geographic isolation, discrimination, or other systemic barriers.
The IDS team has extensive experience partnering with and strengthening CSOs to promote transparency, accountability, good governance, and inclusion while addressing corruption and other governance challenges for effective public service provision. Through tailored methodologies, technical assistance, and practical tools, we support CSOs to contribute to development outcomes by amplifying citizen voices, facilitating collective action, promoting social and gender inclusion, identifying policy and implementation gaps, monitoring service delivery, and strengthening citizen feedback and accountability mechanisms.
Meet our Team
Rosemary Rop
Rosemary Rop is the team’s citizen engagement and governance reform specialist. With a practitioner’s conviction that reform succeeds only when citizen voice is translated into everyday institutional practice, Rosemary brings over 25 years of advising multilateral development banks, national and sub-national governments, state corporations, and civil society across Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and South Asia. She has pioneered award-winning digital citizen-engagement platforms — including MajiVoice and GEMAP, both recipients of the World Bank Innovation Award — and currently advises a county government on the design, adoption, and institutionalisation of a digital citizen-engagement platform.
Rosemary also brings deep thematic expertise in social accountability, digital public infrastructure (GovTech) adoption, institutional reform and change management, political economy analysis, and devolved governance, with strong attention to gender mainstreaming and social inclusion. Having overseen development portfolios exceeding US$500 million — and served as a county Cabinet Executive Committee Member and state-corporation board director — she offers an unusual insider’s vantage point on how reform and technology are actually adopted within government systems, complemented by more than 18 years of engagement with the World Bank Group and work alongside governments, donors, civil society networks, and academia.
Rosemary holds a Post-Graduate Diploma in Organizational Leadership from the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School and an M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Nairobi, and is completing a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration. She is certified in Kenya’s Mwongozo Code of Governance for State Corporations.
About
Dr Linnea Mills
Dr. Linnea Mills is the team’s Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) and governance expert. With a passion for understanding how change happens, and finding ways to measure and communicate this while engaging stakeholders in the process, Linnea will strive to find innovative and participatory ways to maximize the usefulness of M&E. She brings valuable experiences on M&E from several years of leading the M&E work at the World Bank’s Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA) where she has helped develop the organization’s M&E framework and supported evaluators from across the world to monitor and evaluate civil society-led change processes.
Linnea also brings thematic expertise to the team on a variety of subjects under the umbrella of good governance, including transparency, accountability & participation, anti-corruption, public financial management, and development cooperation effectiveness. She also brings 18 years of experience of consulting and working with different stakeholder groups including intergovernmental organizations, donors/government, NGOs, academia, and think tanks.
Linnea holds an M.Sc. in development studies and a Ph.D. on corruption, both from the London School of Economics, as well as a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in international economics and politics from Jönköping International Business School, Sweden.
Where we have worked
