Where
are we and where are we
heading in the Americas?
GIFT made
the most of the Open
Government Partnership
Americas Regional Meeting in
Buenos Aires, with the
organization of four
activities aimed at a rich
exchange experiences in the
promotion of fiscal
transparency and public
participation among the
network partners and
stewards, as well as
providing technical
assistance through
peer-to-peer learning. On
the day prior to the
official OGP meeting
(November 20), there was the
one-day GIFT
fiscal transparency
workshop, which included
representatives of seven
country ministries from the
region that are in charge of
the fiscal transparency
agenda, and are promoting
the kinds of transparency
processes that GIFT is
pushing (Argentina, Chile,
Dominican Republic, El
Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico,
Uruguay).
Moreover, the workshop
provided the space for an
in-depth discussion with the
first GIFT Award
for public participation in
fiscal policy winners: the
Participatory Budget by
Municipality of Cascais in
Portugal, the Budget Monitor
(BM) by the State Audit
Office of Georgia, and the
Farm Subsidies (Subsidios
al Campo) coalition
in Mexico.
These experiences all
provide an example of public
participation that has
transformed the relationship
between the government and
citizens. In the case of
Mexico, a civil society-led
coalition managed to
influence the public debate
and ultimately to change a
national policy. The BM
developed by the SAI of
Georgia is a tool that might
help the population to
discover and report problems
such as those of the farm
subsidies in Mexico. In
Cascais, innovative
mechanisms were applied to
engage all sectors of the
population. These
presentations were followed
by group discussions on
public participation.
The second half of the
workshop was devoted to
budget transparency portals
and open data. The GIFT
coordination team introduced
an afternoon of
presentations on
transparency portals in the
region and framed the
discussion through an
overview of tendencies and
key challenges facing
countries in the region.
Argentina, Chile, Guatemala,
Mexico, Uruguay, El Salvador
and Dominican Republic
presented their advances,
followed by a second group
discussion covering
questions such as current
country work in terms of
transparency; advice for
overcoming political and
institutional resistance,
especially from higher up in
the hierarchy; and how can GIFT
continue supporting these
processes.
In the OGP meeting agenda,
the network had three
sessions: the GIFT
Working Group session, the
presentation of the GIFT Award
for public participation in
fiscal policy, and a fiscal
transparency panel
discussion, where panelists
discussed questions
concerning the end users of
information published; who
gets affected, and who
opposes or imposes
resistance on budget
transparency efforts; the
role of budget and fiscal
transparency in countries’
open government efforts;
what has been planned for
ensuring sustainability of
transparency innovations;
and how to make these
reforms transcend and be
sustainable for the benefit
of citizens.
GIFT
stewards and partners (IBP,
IFAC, World Bank, Finance
Ministry representatives
from Mexico, Uruguay,
Guatemala, El Salvador,
Dominican Republic, among
others) were hosting and
animating the fiscal
openness working group, as
usual. And this will
continue in the future, in
the framework of the
collaboration with OGP
support unit and the OGP
countries. That said, the
OGP support unit formally
announced the new strategic
thematic partnerships model,
which is replacing the
former working groups model.
When OGP was founded, the
Working Groups were created
as a primary vehicle for
providing technical support
and peer learning in
specific open government
areas. The GIFT
network led the way with the
FOWG, which provided support
in drafting commitments,
reviewing action plans, and
facilitating learning
between government and civil
society reformers, and was
driving the advance global
norms, such as the GIFT High
Level Principles on
Fiscal Transparency,
Accountability and
Participation and the
Principles on Public
Participation in Fiscal
Policies. In
the new phase, GIFT will
continue to lead fiscal
transparency and
participation efforts and
activity in the OGP
Community. A Memorandum of
Understanding is being
drafted with OGP, which will
be more specific and result
oriented and will allow our
network to deepen and
enhance the work we have
been doing until now.
Several GIFT
stewards and the network
director were part of the
group of 200 people from
over 37 countries, coming
from different sectors and
diverse backgrounds across
government, civil society,
business and technology,
who were in Amsterdam on
December 6 for the #OCGlobal17,
Open Contracting
Partnership´s annual
global gathering of
innovators and champions.
One of the main
messages from the meeting
was the coincidence in
putting “people at the
heart of this movement”.
For “making open
contracting the norm for
governments everywhere
depends on the conviction,
willpower, determination
and ingenuity of
individuals to drive
change and see it through
– from Nigerian computer
engineers creating
user-friendly tools, to
Paraguayan regulators
setting better policies,
Filipino journalists
asking questions about
contracting processes,
British e-procurement
experts recommending open
contracting to clients,
and Indonesian local
government leaders meeting
regularly with citizens to
hear their feedback.”
As a major
cross-cutting issue, open
contracting is much more
than opening data, it
entails opening systems
and processes behind
public spending and into
long-term change in power
structures. Thus, it soon
gets into opening up
beneficial ownership,
company registers and
asset declarations, to
transparency in budgets
and spending. Following
the Mexican example,
participants were
interested in the
potential of linking the
open contracting standard
data with the Open Fiscal
Data Package as a way of
linking budget information
with the way it is spent
at facility level in
procurement activities.
More to come in the near
future on this topic!
On December 7, the GIFT
Network director, Juan
Pablo Guerrero, joined
fellow colleagues from the
World Bank, Jim Brumby,
Harika Masud, Andrei
Lushin, Maya Gusarova, and
Anna Valkova from the
Russian Ministry of
Finance on an online
presentation of the study International
Practices to Promote
Budget Literacy
undertaken by the World
Bank with financial
support from the Ministry
of Finance of the Russian
Federation. The study
revealed that elements of
budget literacy are
included in school
curricula of at least 34
countries (mainly members
of OECD and the BRICS).
However, unlike financial
literacy and citizenship
education, to date no
international standards or
guidelines have been
established for budget
literacy education.
Juan Pablo underlined
that governments around
the world increasingly
recognize that publishing
budget information is not
enough to ensure citizens’
engagement, hence the
importance of having not
only more educated
teachers and citizens on
budget topics, but more
institutional arrangements
that allow citizen
engagement and public
participation channels on
budget decisions
The
best public participation
in fiscal policy
experiences now up in the
Guide on Public
Participation Principles
and Mechanisms. The 2017
GIFT awarded cases in
Portugal, Georgia and
Mexico
Read about how the
State Audit Office of
Georgia built the Budget
Monitor, a unique analytical
web-platform with
comprehensive information
about public finances,
designed from an auditor’s
perspective via different
data visualization tools,
such as interactive and
user-friendly diagrams,
info-graphics and tables,
that engages the public
constructively throughout
the audit cycle, by
providing a channel through
which citizens can send
audit requests, suggestions,
and proposals, inform the
SAOG about the deficiencies
in the PFM system, and
suggest the priority spheres
for future audit(s). Also,
read how the Municipality of
Caiscais, with a population
of 206,000, has managed to
engage 150,000 citizens
implementing 88 projects
(works) worth 15.820.000€,
through the Participatory
Budget in the last 6 years.
Finally, find out how the
Farm Subsidies (Subsidios
al Campo) coalition,
led by a public interest
group, a peasant
organization, and a group of
academics managed to push
for reforms in the
allocation of the subsidy
programs, by generating
evidence based in the
analysis of budget data.
Insights
at GIFT Fabrizio
Scrollini, Executive
Director of the Latin
American Open Data
Initiative (ILDA): Key
elements for an
effective collaboration
among civil society and
government. Versión
en español
GIFT
experience on peer to peer
learning
Facilitating
peer-to-peer learning is
an activity in which the GIFT
network has invested
significant time and
resources since 2014.
Please find here
the final version of
an assessment on GIFT’s
work stream, aimed at
documenting and
systematizing these
peer-to-peer learning
experiences in order to
extract lessons and
contribute to improving
the learning processes of
the network.
COMMUNITY
WALL
The
Fiscal Transparency Portal
in South Africa is moving
forward
The National Treasury,
Open Up and IMALI YETHU (a
collaboration of various
civil society
organizations) have
launched the Open Budget
Data Portal, which aims to
make budget and public
finance related
information more
accessible to the general
public. This effort
involves two GIFT
stewards, the National
Treasury and the Public
Service Accountability
Monitor. The GIFT
Network will collaborate,
involving soon other
countries and good
experiences, in line with
the cooperation that the
network has developed in
Uruguay, El Salvador, and
the Dominican Republic.
Joint work with the
network will include the
use of the Open
Fiscal Data Package.
Colombia
takes a new step towards
greater fiscal
transparency
It is now it is possible
to consult the contracts
subscribed with public
resources by the
departmental and municipal
governments and review the
detail and the attached
documents for each
contract which are
registered in the National
Public Procurement System
(Secop) in the Economic
Transparency Portal.
This information can be
accessed by clicking on
the new Contracts for
Departments and
Municipalities tab.
Unpublished
budget datasets soon
available in Chile
Following the Protocol
to improve
transparency and the
usability of budget
information
signed by the Ministry of
the Treasury and the
National Congress, the
Budget Office (Dipres)
will make available
unpublished budget
datasets that include
initial and current
budget, monthly
budget execution, and
investment initiatives.
The databases will be
published in excel format
for download and
processing, to be accessed
through the Open Data
banner located on the
Dipres website
(www.dipres.cl) or
directly at the site
www.datos.gob.cl. These
bases will be updated one
month apart and within the
first 5 days after the
publication of the monthly
and quarterly execution
data. The Initial Law and
Current Law information
will be available from
2009, while Investment
Initiatives, since 2014.
UPCOMING
EVENTS
GIFT
Lead Stewards Meeting,
December 20, Washington
D.C.
Lead Stewards will meet
on December 20 to discuss
and approve the Network’s
2018 Work plan,
fundraising issues, and
the admission of new
members, among other
topics.
