The Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) Lead Stewards welcomed the Municipality of Cascais, Portugal, as a new steward on September 9, 2022.
“We commit to engage in the analysis of the action plans of government entities to push for increasing fiscal transparency, participation and accountability in Cascais area of responsibility,” said Carlos Carreiras, Mayor of the Municipality of Cascais, in their letter of expression of interest to become a member of the GIFT network.
GIFT and Cascais has a long history of collaboration. In September 2017, the Participatory Budgeting Initiative of the Municipality of Cascais was recognized as one of the top three winners of GIFT’s Public Participation in Fiscal Policy and Budget Making Award. In October 2018, Cascais organized the first edition of the Smart Citizenship Academy, which presented different examples of participatory budgeting around the world as well as its trends and evolution, with an in-depth analysis of the process and mechanisms. In the same month, Cascais also co-hosted the GIFT Stewards General Meeting that led to the updating of the GIFT Operating Rules and Procedures to establish that all members will present a set of concrete and measurable commitments to improve fiscal transparency and participation, with the engagement to report back periodically on progress to GIFT The network.
Cascais also actively provided their expertise in several GIFT capacity-building sessions including the GIFT Webinar Series in 2019 and the Conference on COVID-19 Funds Transparency and Public Participation in Fiscal Issues in Georgia held in December 2021. In these meetings, Cascais shared experiences and lessons from implementing their participatory budget initiative, a process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a budget, enabling taxpayers to work with governments to make the budget decisions that affect their lives. The Cascais Participatory Budget initiative is well-documented in a case study published on the GIFT website.
For more information, visit:
- https://www.cascais.pt/, @CMCascais on Twitter and Facebook.
- https://fiscaltransparency.net, @FiscalTrans on Twitter and @FiscalTransparency on Facebook and Instagram.