Physically
far but never apart:
Everything
you need to know about
what went on during
GIFT- General Stewards
Meetings
August
24-28 |
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5
days
14
sessions
160
participants
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Read
a thank you letter from
Juan Pablo Guerrero, GIFT
Network Director (English,
Español,
Français)
The online platform
allowed us to successfully
meet and discuss different
topics related to fiscal
transparency, including updates
of stewards activities
and challenges,
innovative digital
tools, assessments and
evaluations, public
participation, tax
justice, modernization
of financial management
systems,
gender-responsive
financial management,
fiscal openness in
COVID-19, and
having an Open
Response + Open Recovery
through OGP National
Action Plans. For
those of you that could
not join us in the
sessions, you can find the
presentations here.
We are grateful to those
of you who took the
initiative of leading
sessions—Open
Government Partnership,
ACIJ-Argentina, and
Collaborative Africa
Budget Reform Initiative
(CABRI)—which greatly
improved our focus on what
interests the Network. We
are also thankful to all
the presenters
that made the time and
effort to share their
work, experiences and
learnings with all the
community. Finally, our
appreciation to all the participants
that enriched the
conversation, keeping the
network alive, resourceful
and valuable.
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Some
of the stewards put forward
the idea of them leading
group discussions on
specific areas of interest,
and we look forward to
enabling this type of
connections. So far,
considering the interests
and proposals, we foresee
two groups: digital
tools for fiscal
transparency and public
participation and cross-cutting
budget practices,
initiating with gender
matters. The Fiscal
Openness Accelerator
project was shown as being a
key project holding many
expectations, we will
continue to bring other GIFT
stewards into this
conversation, assisting with
the further development of
norms and public
participation mechanisms.
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The
GIFT
Encounter Dashboard has
been updated. Thank you to the
vast number of you that have
informed your new and
up-to-date actions. For those
of you who have not done so,
we ask you to update your
plans (and contact us
in case you have lost your
access). In this vein, we
will be reaching out to some
of you to publish blog posts
and organize meetings
related to your experiences
and achievements.
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Significant
discussions took place on
this year’s overwhelming
topic, COVID-19. GIFT
launched the Network’s own Fiscal
Data for Emergency
Response: Guide for
COVID-19,
sanctioned by the General
Stewards. GIFT will continue
to support those willing to
learn from each other,
providing a platform for
sharing knowledge and use of
the Guide to address with
transparency the impacts and
consequences of the
pandemic.
We also concluded that we
could enhance our
collaboration on
communications. We want
GIFT’s social media (Twitter,
Facebook,
LinkedIn
and Instagram)
to be able to, where
appropriate, support your
efforts in reaching our
international community. We
will be soon organizing
meetings on this matter, and
in the coming days, we will
invite you to a new WhatsApp
group that will provide for
timely updates and greater
collaboration in the use of
social networks.
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Fiscal
Data for Emergency
Response: Guide for
COVID-19
GIFT
August 26
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The
GIFT network has
created a practical
guide to help
practitioners
identify the
datasets and data
fields that are
required for
informed internal
decision-making and
transparent
disclosure of
information related
to emergency
responses.
Preparation of the
Guide is the result
of a
multi-stakeholder
effort with
representatives from
nine ministries of
finance, 16 civil
society expert
organizations and 12
international
organizations. The
Guide is designed to
help governments
gather and organize
fiscal information
and to facilitate
its internal and
external use.
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The
Guide includes 15 datasets
and 13 time series grouped
into four dimensions as
follows:
- Emergency
and countercyclical
spending (including budget
adjustments,
extra-budgetary funds,
performance indicators,
investments, payroll and
procurement);
- Tax
relief measures and
deferrals;
- Revenue
adjustments and additional
funding sources (covering
revenue adjustments,
contingent tax
collections, loans and
other debt instruments,
and external development
and humanitarian resource
flows); and
- The
macroeconomic impact of
the emergency fiscal
measures.
Each
dataset is further
disaggregated into more than
370 relevant data fields.
The Guide also includes
examples of how the data can
be used by governments and
other stakeholders for
various purposes of
management, monitoring and
evaluation.
Bearing in mind that data
quality and availability is
an important limitation in
many countries—particularly
for such an extensive list
of data fields—the Guide
includes a section on
customizing the tool for
application in different
national contexts, and key
prerequisites for
publication, including data
availability and quality.
Who
is this Guide for:
- Ministries
of finance (or
equivalent)- to support
the development of a
stronger data
architecture, as well as
to assist the process of
identifying what data to
publish to enable
transparency and
oversight.
- Civil
society/advocacy groups-
to simplify the process of
prioritizing data needs
for monitoring, analysis,
and participation.
- Oversight
institutions– to
contribute to the task of
identifying the data
sources required to
develop diverse analysis,
oversight and auditing.
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Better
Budget Dataquest for
Sustainable
Development- Costa
Rica
August
4
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This
month we presented the
results for the Better
Budget Dataquest 2020 in
Costa Rica. The projects
presented were the
culmination of the Open
Budget School developed in
collaboration by Innovaap
and the Ministry of Finance.
We were delighted to witness
the quality of the projects,
as well as the practicality
of the proposals for
implementation in improving
processes and policies
inside the government.
The
winning projects considering
their use of data, quality
of results and contributions
and communications strategy,
are: National
Budget, public purchases
and reuse of data,
a prototype of tool to
forecast the demand of goods
and services to acquire in a
year linked to budget
allocations and procurement
plans; Mission
School Desk
(Misión Pupitre), a platform
that helps identify the
current state of school
infrastructure and goods by
enabling public
participation with open
data; and an Approach
to Formal Labor through
the National Employment
Program,
an analysis of the
dispersion of objectives,
services and beneficiaries
that the program provides.
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We
want to thank and
congratulate all the
organizations involved in
the development of the
Dataquest, led by Innovaap,
the Ministry of Finance and
UNDP Costa Rica. We look
forward to continuing
exploring the implementation
of the projects!
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Harnessing
Digitalization to
Finance a Sustainable
Future
United
Nations Task Force on Digital
Financing of the SDGs
August 26 |
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The
UN Secretary
General’s Task Force
on Digital Financing
of the Sustainable
Development Goals
(SDGs) report
“People’s Money:
Harnessing
Digitalization to
Finance a
Sustainable Future”
highlights the
historic opportunity
to accelerate and
expand the
transformative
impact of
digitalization in
financing the SDGs.
The report includes
references to some
of our Stewards work
on using fiscal data
for social impact.
Visit
their website
to download the
report and other
useful resources for
policy makers.
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E-learning
course for users of
open data
World
Bank
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Open
Data for Data Users provides
a broad overview of Open
Data from a user
standpoint, and empowers
anyone to take full
advantage of Open Data. It
is intended for anyone who
wants to make better use
of Open Data, including
ordinary citizens, and
assumes no prior knowledge
of Open Data or technical
skills. Upon completion,
users may take an online
assessment test to obtain
a completion certificate
from the online platform.
The
course is self-paced and
available all year-round!
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