Hands-on the 9,560 data points of the Global Data Barometer’s Public Finance Module:
A step-by-step guide
The Global Data Barometer (GDB) is an exciting tool for understanding the state of data for the public good. The GDB works as a repository that enables anyone to access more than 1,100 datasets and 900 regulations from 109 countries and jurisdictions worldwide. Thanks to the work of the GDB team, partners, and more than 100 researchers, the GDB collected over 60,000 data points and organized them through 4 pillars, 2 core modules, and 7 thematic modules (Public Finance -PF-, Public Procurement, Land, Health and COVID-19, Political Integrity, Climate Action, Company Information).
The release of the GDB databases presents many opportunities to be explored by data enthusiasts worldwide. As a result, the GDB team published the “Dig Deeper” blog series. The first article contains an introduction to the structure of the GDB, and the second article reviews questions you can answer using the GDB data. Next, the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) team developed the blog “Advocating for accurate, timely, and trustworthy fiscal information” to explore broad global trends from the results of the Public Finance (PF) module.
To continue mining into the depths of this great well of information for the public good, the GIFT team built this step-by-step guide for the PF module. It aims to facilitate understanding and use of the PF module, from downloading the database to answering specific concerns from stakeholders such as government officials, legislators, journalists, the organized civil society, academics, students, data enthusiasts, and anyone interested in the power of public financial data for the public good.
What is the Global Data Barometer (GDB)?
The GDB is a multi-dimensional and multi-layered study that created a new global data benchmark. To achieve this, it carried out an expert survey and used secondary indicators to generate the metrics. The expert survey was carried out from May 2019 until May 2021 that evaluated 109 countries in 4 pillars: data governance, capability, availability, and use and impact of data. The GDB website enables users to access online tools and visualizations to present results and showcases 124 open databases divided by thematic modules, country, and region, to review the full questionnaires and information gathered by the country researchers, including direct links to the primary sources.
What is the Public Finance (PF) Module?
The Public Finance (PF) Module results from the collaboration between GIFT and GDB. It aims to establish a baseline for governments’ collection, management, and reporting of Public Financial data. The PF Module database contains information from 109 countries, 9,560 data points with 259 specific examples of public finance legal frameworks, and 760 datasets of public finance information worldwide. All the data of the PF Module was collected through 40 questions, each of them feeding a particular pillar: “governance” and “availability.” The following table explains the approach of each indicator for the assessment.
Governance
Evaluate the existence and comprehensiveness of regulatory frameworks that mandate structured information disclosure requirements.
13 questions
Evaluates legal frameworks favoring the publication of 5 key budget documents.
Documents/Data: Executive’s Budget Proposal, Enacted Budget, In-Year Reports, Year-End Report, and Budget execution legal frameworks requiring publication in their most disaggregated version
The evaluation considers the following:
- There are laws that require the collection, publication, and discussion of structured budget information.
- There are laws that require the publication of open data.
- Existence of an auditing/verification process.
- Budget information is timely updated
- There are no significant exceptions to collecting and publishing budget information.
Availability
Evaluate the level of openness and public access to structured, machine-readable information.
27 questions
Evaluates the availability of 2 key-budget documents, 4 budget classifications, and 6 data disaggregation.
Documents/Data: Executive’s Budget Proposal, Budget Amendments, Enacted Budget, Spending, Extrabudgetary Funds, Spending of Public Corporations, Existence of administrative, economic, functional, and programmatic classifications
The evaluation considers the following:
- All budget documents are available on economic, administrative, and functional classifications according to international standards.
- Data is open, free, timely, historical, and machine-readable.
- Considers disaggregation by cross-cutting themes or SDGs, with identifiers linking budget information to performance indicators and/or investment projects.
With this guide…
Any activist, academic, student, public servant, or interested person will unlock the power of the GDB Public Finance Module and understand how governments are approaching public finance data worldwide. By following this guide, you will be able to access the Public Finance Module database; build the global rankings from the PF Module global scores, and for the scores of each indicator, know what your country needs to improve (legal frameworks or data availability); access the full evaluation of any country and identify the highest and lowest scoring questions; finally, you will be able to review the results of all countries on a specific question to take a look on better practices, regional and global trends in legal frameworks and data publication.
You can go further into your analysis, complementing the PF Module data with the information of other tools, such as the Open Budget Survey 2021. Furthermore, the insights from this guide can exponentially grow if we include public participation. The GIFT network has the enriching experience of the #BetterBudgetDataquest for Sustainable Development and #RallyFromHome on Public Infrastructure Data that pushes for the collaboration between the government and the public to improve the tools, data, and use of public finance information.
Who can use this information?
- Officials at all levels of government (ministries of finance, line ministries, subnational governments) who aim to access data for evidence-based decision making, who want to identify quantifiable windows of opportunity in public financial management, and monitor the effectiveness of public policies, as well as to be inspired by international practice to take action today.
- Legislators to explore windows of opportunity on laws, norms, and official guides to guarantee the publication of open fiscal data.
- Journalists looking for sources of information on public financial data, legal frameworks, and fiscal policy trends, as well as to make comparative analyses between countries.
- Developers, data scientists, and data enthusiasts looking for a new challenge in organizing, extracting, and interpreting data, creating visualizations, or identifying trends with social impact.
- Civil society organizations that carry out the timely analyses required to make effective proposals for improvements in legal frameworks and monitor the government’s allocation of resources to hold them accountable, offer alternatives, and communicate their findings to the public.
- Academia and students as a basis for their analyses on public finance legal frameworks, data publication, and worldwide transparency and spending decisions. Detect trends and windows of opportunity to build innovative research and address the challenges worldwide.
- The public can access specific laws, databases, and documents to build an informed public opinion, engage with their governments in the budget cycle, and participate in budget decision-making.