by Marianne Klinker | Sep 19, 2017
September 2017 | By International Budget Partnership South Africa
Governments often experience social audits as a challenge to their authority. As a result social audits often push government, the people and civil society further apart. This short film tells the story of how residents, elected officials, administrators, and civil society organizations worked together to improve sanitation in Wattville, near Johannesburg in South Africa.
Work done by Planact, the Social Audit Network, IBP South Africa, and the government of Ekurhuleni led to faulty portable toilets being replaced, improved relationships between government and residents, and a commitment to scale up a collaborative approach to social accountability. Watch the video below, or click here to watch on YouTube.
Related Resource
Access to information is one of the biggest challenges organizations that try to engage in the budgets of local governments in South Africa face. Some of the key documents are not published and the formal access to information machinery seldom brings the desired results. For this project, IBP South Africa, Planact, and the Social Audit Network used a networking approach to access the information they needed. This graphic explains how they did it.
by Marianne Klinker | Sep 5, 2017
September 2017 | By International Budget Partnership Kenya
In May 2017, IBP Kenya began to investigate what the concept of budget deliberation would mean in practice by organizing budget deliberation demonstrations in Isiolo, Mombasa, and Nakuru counties. In each demonstration, participants were asked to deliberate on allocations to the national budget sectors (health, education, etc.). Participants first learned about the sectors using IBP Kenya’s citizen-friendly Information Package on National Government Sectors, then deliberated, and then decided on an allocation.
Download Materials
This Information Package helps readers think about how to make tradeoffs between sectors by presenting nine factors that should be taken into account when deciding on sector allocations. It can be useful to Kenyan citizens interested in engaging in sector debate at the national level, and to think about the type of information that is needed to have budget sector discussions at the county level.
Watch Videos
These videos capture highlights of the deliberation demonstrations, including information on how to facilitate them, how to help people think about budget tradeoffs, a synthesis of all three sessions, and key lessons learned. Watch the videos below, or click here to watch on YouTube.
This video provides a synthesis of budget deliberation demonstrations in Isiolo, Mombasa, and Nakuru counties. Watch the video below, or click here to watch on YouTube.
The following videos capture highlights of budget deliberation demonstrations in Isiolo, Mombasa, and Nakuru counties. Click on an image to watch a video, or view the playlist on YouTube.
The following videos capture information on how to facilitate budget deliberation demonstrations. Click on an image to watch a video, or view the playlist on YouTube.
How to Facilitate Deliberations Around the Budget Effectively
How Do We Decide on Sector Allocations in the Budget?
What We Have Learned About Deliberating Budgets?
Further Reading
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by Marianne Klinker | Apr 5, 2017
April 2017 | by Planact
In February 2016, Planact, with the support of the International Budget Partnership, Social Justice Coalition, and Ndifuna Ukwazi, partnered with the Spring Valley community on a social audit of water service delivery in the informal settlement, aimed at holding the Emalahleni Local Municipality accountable for water provision. This short video highlights their success.
Click here to read more about the project and download Planact’s Social Audit Report.
by Marianne Klinker | Feb 28, 2017
February 2017 | By International Budget Partnership Kenya
In 2016, IBP Kenya began promoting a new approach to public engagement with budgets termed “deliberating budgets.” The approach is rooted in theories of deliberative democracy, which emphasizes the importance of giving and debating reasons for the choices we make. In the context of budget-making, deliberation occurs particularly around the reasons for the trade-offs — giving more to particular areas and less to others.
What does deliberation about the budget actually look like? One answer emerges from Nairobi County, Kenya. In February 2017, IBP Kenya helped to facilitate a session of the County Budget and Economic Forum (CBEF) to discuss the 2017/18 budget. Members of government departments were invited to discuss their budget proposals with members of the CBEF and some members of civil society. What emerged was a robust discussion about the choices the government was proposing to make in 2017/18, the reasons for those choices, and the concerns of public representatives about those reasons.
This video captures highlights of these deliberations and can be used to stimulate further discussion among the wider public about the upcoming budget and the reasoning behind major government proposals. Watch the video below, or click here to watch on YouTube.
In addition, the following videos capture sector-specific budget deliberations from the forum. Click on an image to watch a video, or view the playlist on YouTube.
The Office of the Governor:
County Environment Sector:
Related
by IBP Consultant | Apr 9, 2015
In this video three IBP partners share their compelling stories of how they used budget analysis and monitoring to improve government spending and policies to help the poorest and most marginalized people in their country.
