Budget transparency — the public availability of comprehensive and timely information about public finances — is a key precondition for promoting an informed public dialogue around policy priorities, and for ensuring government accountability. Providing public access to sufficient budget information enables citizens and civil society groups to understand how governments collect and spend revenues and to engage in monitoring and advocacy that can affect decision making regarding public budget policies. Yet, according to the International Budget Partnership’s Open Budget Survey, only a limited number of countries provide access to budget information that is sufficient for these purposes. Many countries have improved their levels of budget transparency, but then seem to get stuck in the middle ranks of the Open Budget Index (a global comparative measure of government budget transparency that is drawn from the Open Budget Survey) with scores that do not surpass 60/100 — the point at which governments are considered to be publishing sufficient information to enable public accountability. Why is that? And what have those governments that managed to break through that barrier done to guarantee that their citizens have access to adequate amounts of budget information?
This paper examines the budget transparency practices of six countries (Argentina, Ghana, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, and Uganda), some of which successfully moved over the 60-point threshold, while others remained stuck in the middle of the Open Budget Index. It aims to identify not only catalytic factors that may have prompted governments to take steps to improve budget transparency but also some of the more specific steps they took (or did not take) in order to do so. It also examines the barriers that they faced in achieving and sustaining those improvements.
The Open Budget Index assigns countries covered by the International Budget Partnership’s Open Budget Survey a transparency score on a 100-point scale using 109 of the Survey’s 140 questions. These questions focus specifically on whether the government provides the public with timely access to comprehensive budget information based on the public availability and content of eight key budget documents that all governments should publish over the different stages of the budget cycle. A score of roughly 60 is considered to represent the level at which countries are publishing sufficient information to allow public discussions on the budget to occur.
This case study examines Uganda’s journey toward greater budget transparency, looking at its reform trajectory from 2006 to 2015 in order to identify factors that have contributed to improved budget transparency during this period.
The Open Budget Index assigns countries covered by the International Budget Partnership’s Open Budget Survey a transparency score on a 100-point scale using 109 of the Survey’s 140 questions. These questions focus specifically on whether the government provides the public with timely access to comprehensive budget information based on the public availability and content of eight key budget documents that all governments should publish over the different stages of the budget cycle. A score of roughly 60 is considered to represent the level at which countries are publishing sufficient information to allow public discussions on the budget to occur.
Ghana has been making some efforts toward improving budget transparency over the years by making some information and some budget documents available to the public. However, Ghana’s performance on the Open Budget Index has not shown much improvement. This case study examines Ghana’s efforts, with special emphasis on the period of 2008 to 2016. It also examines the issue of “volatility” (i.e., the inconsistent publication of government budget information from year to year) in Ghana’s performance.
The Open Budget Index assigns countries covered by the International Budget Partnership’s Open Budget Survey a transparency score on a 100-point scale using 109 of the Survey’s 140 questions. These questions focus specifically on whether the government provides the public with timely access to comprehensive budget information based on the public availability and content of eight key budget documents that all governments should publish over the different stages of the budget cycle. A score of roughly 60 is considered to represent the level at which countries are publishing sufficient information to allow public discussions on the budget to occur.
After languishing in the “limited” category on the Open Budget Index for nearly a decade, the Philippines managed to achieve a score of 64 in the 2015 round. Up from a score of 48 in 2012, the country ascended to the rank of 21st in the world, fourth in Asia, and first in Southeast Asia. On the surface, the Philippines improved its transparency rating simply by publishing all eight key budget documents. However, beneath that surface is a story of how key actors in the government bureaucracy took action to fulfill the promise made by the administration at that time to curb corruption and make the management of public funds more efficient, effective, and open to citizens. This case study examines the public finance management reforms and additional government actions that served to increase fiscal transparency in the Philippines.
The Open Budget Index assigns countries covered by the International Budget Partnership’s Open Budget Survey a transparency score on a 100-point scale using 109 of the Survey’s 140 questions. These questions focus specifically on whether the government provides the public with timely access to comprehensive budget information based on the public availability and content of eight key budget documents that all governments should publish over the different stages of the budget cycle. A score of roughly 60 is considered to represent the level at which countries are publishing sufficient information to allow public discussions on the budget to occur.
In the 2006 and 2008 rounds of the Open Budget Survey, Mexico’s Open Budget Index score fell in the middle range. However, beginning in 2009 the Mexican Ministry of Finance started taking budget transparency seriously, which was reflected by an increase in Open Budget Index scores in the 2012 and 2015 rounds. This case study examines why the Mexican government decided to enhance fiscal transparency and which actions were put in place both to start and to maintain the upward trend.
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