We are thrilled to warmly
welcome the General
Directorate of the National
Public Budget of the Ministry
of Finance of Colombia
as the network’s 46th
Steward. The Directorate has
shown increased commitment
to fiscal transparency and
engagement with GIFT in
the last two years. A
Directorate’s representative
has participated in the GIFT
General Stewards meeting
(October 2017), in the Open
Contracting Meeting in
Amsterdam (November 2017)
and finally in the OGP
Americas Regional Meeting
(Buenos Aires, November
2017). More recently, the
Directorate was also
represented at the IBP
regional launch of the Open
Budget Survey in Santo
Domingo (May 2018). With
this new addition, the group
of government budget
institutions now expanded to
19. Additionally, our now
new Steward enthusiastically
participated in
#DatosEnLaCalle along with
Mexico and Chile to
celebrate the International
Open Data Day in March!
The GIFT
Lead
Stewards met on June 5,
and defined the dates for
the General Stewards
Meeting. So, prepare your
own updates and news, and
pack your bags to attend
our following meeting in Cascais,
Portugal on October
15-17!
Lead Stewards also
accepted a proposal by the
International Budget
Partnership to
develop a joint strategy
to engage government
stewards in the agenda of
public
participation in fiscal
policies. See
details in the
communication to the GIFT
stewards here.
Latin
American Launch of the OBS
in the Dominican Republic
convenes 8 countries from
the region Santo
Domingo, May 16-17
The Ministry of the
Treasury of the Dominican
Republic and the
International Budget
Partnership (IBP), GIFT
Stewards, along with the
Inter-American Development
Bank (IADB) hosted the Strengthening
Open Budget Practices in
Latin America and the
Caribbean technical
workshop. IBP presented the
global and regional results
of the 2017 OBS and
facilitated a peer
discussion of the country
specific results. Maria José
Eva from IBP highlighted the
global trend of decreasing
fiscal transparency and
called on governments and
civil society to work
together to revert such
trend. GIFT
network director led a
session on public
participation, aimed to
analyze the new public
participation indicators in
the OBS, which are based on
GIFT’s
Public
Participation Principles;
share and discuss tools and
practices that countries can
implement to advance fiscal
transparency and
participation; and to
identify peer support for
technical collaboration. He
observed that development
objectives, such as the
Sustainable Development
Goals, will not be achieved
without public
participation. The event
brought together GIFT
partners and stewards from
Argentina, Colombia, Costa
Rica, Dominican Republic, El
Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico,
and Paraguay who shared
their progress and plans to
advance fiscal transparency
and public participation.
Workshop
on Digital Tools,
Information Technology and
Citizen Engagement in
Zagreb, Croatia May
23
GIFT
gathered representatives
from Croatia and Ukraine (GIFT
stewards), Slovenia, Bosnia
& Herzegovina, Serbia,
Macedonia, Armenia, Georgia,
the Neverlands, Russia
Federation, Bulgaria,
Belarus and the Kyrgyz
Republic to discuss the use
of digital tools to promote
public participation.
Participants learned about
experiences in the
implementation of fiscal
transparency portals, the
use of open data, a policy
to target audience and the
use of social media to
provide channels for citizen
engagement. Participants
shared their plans to make
public finance data more
open to the public and
identified areas of common
interest to learn from each
other. The workshop was
co-facilitated by GIFT
Lead Steward, Secretariat of
the Treasury and Public
Credit of Mexico, and was
the preamble to the
14thAnnual Meeting of the
OECD Regional Network of
Central, Eastern &
South-Eastern European
Senior Budget Officials
(CESEE-SBO).
GIFT
at the 14thAnnual Meeting
of the OECD Regional
Network of Central,
Eastern &
South-Eastern European
Senior Budget Officials Zagreb,
Croatia- May 24-25
In the framework of this
OECD Senior Budget Officials
meeting, with Albania,
Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Belarus, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Bulgaria,
Croatia, Czech Republic,
Estonia, Georgia, Greece,
Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania,
FYR Macedonia, Moldova,
Netherlands, Romania,
Russia, Serbia, Montenegro,
Slovenia, Turkey and
Ukraine, GIFT
and IBP
led group sessions intended
to facilitate the
development of strategies to
enhance budget transparency
and public participation.
The discussions drew on new
data from the OECD Budget
Practices and Procedures
Survey and the IBP’s Open
Budget Survey, and the
results will inform a
regional ministerial meeting
planned alongside the Open
Government Partnership
Global Summit in Tbilisi in
July 2018.
GIFT
at the Regional Workshop
on Transparency and Open
Contracting in Mexico City Mexico
City, May 30-31
The Workshop was
organized by the Mexican
Executive Secretariat of the
National Anticorruption
System, in coordination with
the Interamerican Network of
Government Procurement, the
Organization of American
States, the InterAmerican
Development Bank, the Latin
American Open Data
Initiative, the Open
Contracting Partnership and
Hivos International.
Government representatives
from Mexico, Chile,
Colombia, Paraguay,
Guatemala, El Salvador, and
Costa Rica, along with civil
society representatives from
the region exchanged
experiences on advancing
open contracting and
collectively built an
integral and transversal
regional vision on the
matter. Juan Pablo Guerrero
reflected on the absolute
centrality of citizen
engagement to achieve and
sustain progress in the open
contracting systems. In
thinking about the
sustainability of
transparency reforms in this
sector, he stressed that
focusing on the user is key.
UPCOMING
Cuentas
Claras conference
Transparent Government –
Leveraging Private Sector
Partnerships, Panama City,
June 13-14
The conference is
organized jointly by the
World Bank Group and the
Government of Panama. It
convenes high-level
government officials and
policy makers,
representatives of
multilateral financial
institutions, experts in
governance, civil society
leaders, and journalists
from Latin America and the
Caribbean (LAC) and the rest
of the world.
The objective is to
foster dialogue on how
enhanced transparency,
accountability, and
financial reporting systems
in the private and public
sectors can help build trust
and confidence, as well as
crowd-in the private sector
to create markets, leverage
government spending, and
maximize finance for
development. This event aims
to promote the exchange of
ideas on the policies,
strategies and institutional
arrangements necessary to
address the challenges of
enhancing transparency and
accountability in the public
sector to mobilize private
financing for development
and promote economic growth
in the region. It also aims
to identify tangible next
steps to strengthen LAC’s
enabling environment for
enhanced private sector
involvement in development
finance.
GIFT’s
Network Director
will participate in a panel
to discuss technological
innovations in enhancing
transparency, combating
corruption, and stopping
illicit financial flows.
GIFT
at the Official National
Launch of the New
Brazilian Fiscal
Transparency Portal,
Brasilia, June 28-29
The event, organized by
the Brazil´s Secretary for
Transparency and Prevention
of Corruption of the
Ministry of Transparency and
Comptroller General of the
Union and GIFT,
will bring together CSOs and
MoF representatives from
Argentina, Brazil, Colombia,
Chile, Dominican Republic,
El Salvador, Egypt,
Guatemala, Liberia, Mexico,
Nigeria, Paraguay, South
Africa, and Uruguay. The
agenda also includes a
Workshop on Information
Technologies, Transparency
and Public Participation.
A
webinar tomorrow (Tuesday
June 12 at 11:00 CDT) and
a complete new tutorial on
disclosing and using
budget open data, by
Mexico’s SHCP and GIFT now
available!
Don’t miss it! (For the
moment, all in Spanish)
At the request of GIFT
Stewards to have practical
resources that explain how
to implement a fiscal
transparency policy with
open data as a fundamental
pillar, based on the
successful experience of GIFT
Stewards, the
Mexican Secretariat of
Finance and Public Credit
(SHCP) –GIFT Lead
Steward—and GIFT have
produced a new tutorial that
will be launched next month.
The tutorial will be
composed of a series of ten
1-2 minutes that address the
what, how and for what of an
open data policy to disclose
and communicate budget
information.
