Posted: August 19, 2021
The Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) Lead Stewards welcomed and officially accepted the application for stewardship of Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, during a meeting held last August 10, 2021. The City of Bogotá is the first local government member of GIFT, as until now only national governments have been stewards of the network.
According to Juan Pablo Guerrero, GIFT Network Director, “Bogota has been actively participating in regional peer-exchange on financial management, open data and use of technology to advance fiscal transparency and public participation. Bogota also held its ever #BetterBudget Dataquest for Sustainable Development this year through organizing online tutorials to introduce open data and its value to citizens and government and launching a contest on data use. It has also conducted initial work for data standardization on the Open Fiscal Data Schema.”
General Secretary of Bogotá, Margarita Barraquer explains that the city green-lighted projects that empower citizens and allow them to access information in open data so that they can explore, analyze and participate in the development of new proposals that benefit the city and its inhabitants.
“This is an important step to continue strengthening the oversight of social control and ensure that citizens appropriate the information and defend the public,” said Secretary Barraquer.
The acceptance of Bogotá as GIFT’s first local member coincides with the network’s 10-year anniversary celebration, and signals a new milestone and strategic direction for the network towards strengthening collaborative partnerships and technical assistance to subnational governments, where innovations in participatory decision-making and public participation in the use public resources, are becoming more frequent and a potential source of inspiration for national governments.
More details about the GIFT guidelines for local government membership shall be announced in selected sessions of the upcoming GIFT Stewards General Meeting from August 24-27, 2021.
For more information, visit:
- bogota.gov.co, @Bogota in Twitter and @AlcaldiaBogota in Facebook.
- fiscaltransparency.net, @FiscalTrans in Twitter and @FiscalTransparency in Facebook and Instagram.