Additionally, the Lead
Stewards meeting on December
20th had the objective of
discussing and approving the
2018 work plan, which
continues to be organized
around four work streams, as
follows.
1)
Strengthening of
global norms,
emphasizing public
participation
•
Dissemination of
Public Participation
Principles and
Mechanisms:
Seminars/webinars
engaging
practitioners;
translation of
materials into
French, Spanish and
Russian; second
edition of
international
contest seeking
central government
level cases •
Disclosure of useful
information for
citizens
(procurement, and
public service
delivery data with
greater granularity) •Work
around the 2017 Open
Budget Survey •
Revenue transparency
and the relationship
with taxpayer
compliance, building
of state capacity
for development, and
citizen trust in
government, which
should tie into OGP
efforts on
“Rebuilding Trust in
Government”
2)
Technical
cooperation and
peer-learning for
country level fiscal
transparency
implementation;
•
Memorandum of
Understanding with
OGP to replace the
Fiscal Openness
Working Group
framework, with more
specific activities
and more
result-oriented
(including providing
advice on draft
Action Plans, and
country level
support via peer
learning, field
tours and workshops,
including side
events during the
2018 OGP Summit in
Georgia) •
Special attention to
2 region: Africa (in
collaboration with
IBP and CABRI) and
Europe (in
collaboration with
the PEMPAL network
and the OECD Senior
Budget Officials) •
Scaling-up learning
methods, following
the recommendations
of the assessment;
bringing more
technical content to
members on an
adaptive basis,
reviving and
restructuring its
online Community of
Practice •
In coordination with
the World Bank, in a
selected number of
countries where
revenue transparency
will be part of the
WB operations, GIFT
will seek to
facilitate
collaboration with
CSOs to develop
government-led
public consultation
processes around tax
reform
3)
Developing practical
tools for public
participation and
transparency (ICT
and open data) and
working with network
members to fully use
them
•
Continue developing
the open data tool
for publishing
fiscal information,
to help non-experts
use financial data;
further Open
Contracting
Partnership to
implement the Open
Contracting
Standard, linking
federal budget data
with detailed
(transaction-level)
procurement
information •
Methodology for
building or
redesigning fiscal
transparency
portals, based on
the accumulated
experience of
network members’
processes, while
additionally
continuing the
technical
assistance, via peer
learning methods
4)
Engagement, network
consolidation and
outreach
•
Stronger engagement
from GIFT lead
stewards, including
assuming a
leadership role in
one or more GIFT
activities •
On outreach,
membership should
expand to achieve
more global
coverage, with
additional Stewards
sought in Africa,
Europe and Asia;
while the geographic
representation
within GIFT needs to
be broader, any move
to expand membership
should be manageable
under the current
working model
IBP
LAUNCHES THE 2017 OPEN
BUDGET SURVEY
Join the conversation on
How Can We Bridge
the Gap between Citizens
and State? by
discussing the
Findings from the Open
Budget Survey 2017! IBP
will be co-hosting two
global OBS 2017 release
events. One on January
31 in DC at the
World Bank, and the second
with DFID in London on February
6. These
launching events will
convene government
officials, policymakers,
civil society
representatives, and
others for a discussion on
the latest findings from
the Open Budget Survey
2017 on the state of
government budget
transparency and
accountability in 115
countries around the
world. Which countries
have made progress and
which have regressed? What
drives improvements and
regressions in budget
transparency,
participation, and
accountability? What can
reformers both in and
outside government do to
encourage and sustain more
open and accountable
budgets? What are the new
findings on public
participation in the
fiscal cycle? In the
current context of growing
distrust in democratic
institutions, shrinking
civic space, and
retreating democratic
engagement, participants
will examine how improving
countries’ public finance
systems and practices can
be an important step in
bridging the gap between
citizens and their
governments.
Check out details and
reserve here for
the DC event and here for
the London event.
Additionally, IBP
will join efforts with the
GIFT
coordination team and GIFT’s Steward,
the Collaborative Africa
Budget Reform Initiative
(CABRI) to carry out a
workshop in Guinea Conakry
on February 22-23 to
discuss the results of the
countries in the region.
More regional
dissemination events and
workshop will be taking
place in the coming
months! Follow
@Fiscaltrans and
@OpenBudgets to be on
top of this 2018 agenda.
NEW
RESOURCES
GIFT
publishes the Expanded
Version of the GIFT
High-Level Principles
The Principles, published
in 2012 and endorsed by
UNGA, have played a central
role in the activities of
the network, helping to
promote convergence between
and identify gaps in
standards, and they remain
central to framing the
activities of the network.
For instance, High-Level
Principle 10, asserting a
citizen right to direct
participation in fiscal
policy, was the origin of GIFT’s
significant on-going work
promoting more direct public
engagement in the design and
implementation of fiscal
policies. GIFT’s
work in 2018-2020 on putting
the citizen at the center of
fiscal transparency by
publishing detailed data on
public services and
procurement is similarly
being framed under the
High-Level Principles.
The Expanded Version
explains each of the ten
Principles in more detail.
It explains why each
Principle is important and
how it is reflected in
existing international
norms, and provides a wide
range of country examples of
good practice as well as
additional information and
sources of guidance. The
document is intended to help
any policy maker,
practitioner or advocate
apply the Principles in
practice in the cause of
increasing the impact of
fiscal policies on economic,
social and environmental
outcomes.
THREE
NEW PUBLIC PARTICIPATION
IN FISCAL POLICY CASES IN
NEPAL, COLOMBIA AND
GERMANY IN GIFT’S GUIDE
In Nepal, since the
(re)introduction of
parliamentary democracy in
1990, several
decentralization reforms
were implemented. These
reforms have focused on enhancing traditional
forms of participatory
forums, creating new
participatory institutions,
and combining both
traditional and modern types
of mechanisms to
institutionalize
participatory
decision-making at the local
level. Participatory
planning integrates new and
old forms of participatory
practices with the aim to
directly engage citizens in
various aspects of local
governance, including
formulating annual budgets
and programs, implementation
of such programs and in some
cases involving citizens in
monitoring and evaluation
committees in
municipalities. This case
reports the assessment of a
municipal planning process
that was organized in
2014-15 in Butwal
sub-metropolitan city in
Nepal.
On another local level
practice, the Participatory
Budget Wuppertal is a
pilot project within the
EU-funded Horizon 2020
project EMPATIA (“Enabling
Multichannel Participation
through ICT Adaptations”).
The key goal of the pilot is
to provide new means of
participating in and
learning about municipal
budget decisions, with a
focus on the integration of
formats both on-site and
online.
Finally, in Colombia
the Anti-Corruption
Presidential Commission
launched in 2008 the Citizen
Visible Audits (CVA)
program to promote
transparency of royalty
funds and citizen
participation in the
management of public
investments. Through this
practice, mining royalties
that are transferred to
sub-national governments and
allocated to public works in
areas such as education,
health, nutrition, and
water, government seeks to
prevent corrupt practices in
the use of royalties.
Visit
the Guide and
learn about these cases
and more!
Insights
at GIFT Innovations
in fiscal transparency
portals:
Janet López from the Office of
Planning and Budget, GIFT
Steward, shares their
experiences putting together
their recently launched fiscal
transparency portal (in
Spanish). Check it out!
In a collaboration by GIFT
and IBP, Paolo de Renzio
has produced a note
that summarizes the main
issues and findings from
two inter-related
projects: a set of
think-pieces written by
senior academics and
practitioners, based on
their own past research
and policy experience; and
a set of interviews with
politicians and senior
officials considered
“reform champions” in
their respective
countries, to gather
first-hand personal
testimonies from people at
the forefront of
successful fiscal openness
reforms about the
incentives that they faced
during the various stages
of the reform process,
from formulation to
implementation.
UPCOMING
EVENTS
Data
on the streets: Data Rally
2018 Sign
in from February 1st to
February 28th
To celebrate
International Open Data
Day, Mexico’s Ministry of
Finance and Public Credit
through it’s Fiscal
Transparency Portal,
alongside Social TIC,
A.C., leader
non-for-profit
organization in digital
empowerment and open data,
will carry out their 3rd
edition of the
#DatosEnLaCalle
(DataOnTheStreets) Rally.
The main objective is that
participants become social
supervisors of public
projects and agents of
change in the use and
promotion of fiscal
transparency geolocated
data.
For the first time,
the Data Rally will be
international. The Mexican
Ministry of Finance is
inviting all agencies and
organizations that publish
or use fiscal transparency
geolocated data to join
this activity. For more
information, stay
tuned following
@fiscaltrans and join a
hangouts session on
Friday January 26 at
12:00 EST to
learn how you can organize
the rally in your country
to interest and engage
citizens in the use of
budget data for
accountability.
The Rally starts on
Thursday February 19th
with a webinar about the
use of platforms and ends
with an event on March 3rd,
where the final results
will be announced, and
prizes will be given.
