the budget - do you care?
TRANSCRIPT
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 // [email protected]
Cecile Le Guen: @CecileLG & @openspending // [email protected]