The increased interest by civil society in recent decades in the monitoring of resources for public policies has led budgetary authorities to create new arrangements to respond to the increased need for transparency. Budget trackers for the monitoring of green budgets, for vulnerable groups or gender have been examples of the institutional response to identify public resources for a specific theme and are commonly devised as budgetary reports from the implementing government entities (using a bottom-up approach).

This document provides an assessment of the institutional experience of Colombia in the five existing budget trackers and identifies challenges in the current approach. The document concludes that budget trackers as institutional arrangements are (i) relevant for and have contributed to fiscal transparency, but their success is highly dependent on legal mandates; (ii) even with supporting legal mandates, bottom-up reporting approaches compromise the quality information compiled; and (iii) top-down approaches (from budgetary authorities) can become more relevant as the number of sustainability themes of interest increases.