Documents You Can Use: What The Open Budget Survey 2010 Tells Us About the Global State of Transparency

The state of global budget transparency is poor. The results of the International Budget Partnership’s recent 2010 Open Budget Survey (OBS) reveal that seventy-four countries assessed fail to meet basic standards of transparency and accountability. This article explains the importance of budget transparency and analyzes the results of the Survey. Drawing on OBS findings from previous years, this article concludes that, while the current state of transparency is dismal, the trajectory is positive.