the budget - do you care?

THE BUDGETDo you care?

Who we are

Anna Alberts: Open Knowledge Foundation Germany - OpenBudgets.eu

Cecile Le Guen: Open Knowledge International - Open Spending & OpenBudgets.eu

Money in Politics

How does this affect me?

Tracing Money Through Politics

Financial Transparency

Where to start

Get Background InformationProcess: bottom up/top down

Type of budgeting: input or performance basedRoom for Policy Change

Priorities and Summaries

Division between line departments

Division of responsibilities between entities

Budget Speech

Pay Special Attention to: Cycle: division of power

Emergency or Discretionary Funds

What is not on the budget: Off Budget PaymentsGuarantees

Budget Adjustments

Procurement Procedures

Capital Investments and PPP

Your Technocracy: Germany

You have a budget of 6,600 lines!

And a Debt Brake Law

The German Federal Budget Process

RemarkableMulti-Annual forecasts and financial plans

Technocratic and Top Down

Pessimistic

Room for Policy Change: +/- 10 %

Oversight: Budget Committee of 40 Parliamentarians

Freeze every line item -> 6,600

Changes in line-items

Under-Estimation and Adjustment in November

Getting insights: Visualisation

Storytelling

1 - Scandal in France in Education

Marseille - The 2d biggest city in the country

The big shame of the country

February 02 - 2016

When you see kids in your classroom with blue lips, you feel ashamed

Tackling the public schools scandal. Issues faced:

- Where to find budget files- Where to ask for statements and deliberations- How to read, analyse and visualise the files- How to compare with other cities

+ 5 millions €+ 1 committed Minister

April 17th

How to fix the system?

- Open and publish budgets- Be transparent to your citizens- Deliver quality files- Use tools to present information comprehensively

2 - Social audit in Malaysia

Track where the promised funds for the recent devastating East Coast floods have been allocated

Why running a social audit as citizens in Malaysia?

● Map out projects and real outputs against governments’ budgets, promises and policies

● Hold government accountable● Observe and document changes of indicators ● Participate in budgets/policies elaboration before General Election in

2017

User stories

● As a local council department head, I want to know the issues faced by residents, so I can allocate appropriate resources.

● As a MP, I want to know the socio-economic indicators of people in constituency so that I can ask for better budget policies.

● As a journalist, I want to know easy overview of the budget.

Methodology

● Freedom of Information Access requests sent (FOIA)● FOIA requests answered● Budget files collected● Budget files cleaned, analysed and published as open data● Community social audit workshop ● Listing and reporting issues to local councilors● Involving all citizens in disenfranchised communities ● Make sure weaker voices are heard

Results

Provide tools to open up budgets

● Open Spending● A Community● A Database● All tools accessible in Open Source

www.openspending.org

www.next.openspending.org

www.next.openspending.org

www.offenerhaushalt.de

www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org

3 - How a Fire led to Budget Transparency?

Hasadna: How a Fire led to Budget Transparency

Budget Drill Down

Future Plans

Q & A

Anna Alberts: @anna_alberts & @OpenBudgets.EU // anna.alberts@okfn.de

Cecile Le Guen: @CecileLG & @openspending // cecile.leguen@okfn.org