ARTICLE ~ February 2, 2009
New Open Budget Index Links Poor Performance, Lack of Transparency
Today the International Budget Partnership released its Open Budget Index for 2008. The index is a biennial, independent, comparative measure of government budget transparency in 85 countries. This year for the first time, the report includes data on openness and public accountability in China, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
According to an analysis by RWI, the 2008 index data confirms a direct connection between the poor performance of resource-dependent countries and the lack of budget transparency and accountability in the 22 countries considered significant oil and gas producers. Revenue Watch's analysis is presented in a new brief, "Resource Dependence and Budget Transparency," which probes the question of an inevitable link between natural resource abundance and opaque budgeting. The brief was written by RWI senior economist Antoine Heuty with graduate associate Ruth Carlitz, who also led in the writing of the new Open Budget Index report.
Revenue Watch enjoys an extensive collaboration with the International Budget Partnership on multiple projects, and IBP Director Warren Krafchik sits on RWI's Governing Board.
Audio
In a panel discussion recorded February 10, 2009, experts from Revenue Watch and the International Budget Partnership discuss the 2008 Open Budget Index and the links between poor performance and the lack of transparency in resource dependent countries.
About the Open Budget Index
The Open Budget Initiative is a global research and advocacy program to promote public access to budget information and the adoption of accountable budget systems.
IBP launched the Initiative with the Open Budget Survey—a comprehensive analysis and survey that evaluates whether governments give the public access to budget information and opportunities to participate in the budget process at the national level. The IBP works with civil society partners in 85 countries to collect the data for the Survey. The first Open Budget Survey was released in 2006 and will be conducted biennially.
To easily measure the overall commitment of the countries surveyed to transparency and to allow for comparisons among countries, IBP created the Open Budget Index (OBI) from the Survey. The OBI assigns a score to each country based on the information it makes available to the public throughout the budget process.
The budget is a government’s plan for how it is going to use the public’s resources to meet the public’s needs. Transparency means all of a country’s people can access information on how much is allocated to different types of spending, what revenues are collected, and how international donor assistance and other public resources are used. The IBP believes that open budgets are empowering; they allow people to be the judge of whether or not their government officials are good stewards of public funds.
While providing the public with comprehensive and timely information on the government's budget and financial activities and opportunities to participate in decision making can strengthen oversight and improve policy choices, keeping the process closed can have the opposite effect. Restricting access to information creates opportunities for governments to hide unpopular, wasteful, and corrupt spending, ultimately reducing the resources available to fight poverty.
Since a significant amount of poverty-reducing expenditures take place at the subnational level, the Initiative also has initiated a major new effort to support work on budget transparency and accountability at this level.
The Open Budget Initiative plans to collaborate with civil society organizations worldwide to undertake research and advocacy to raise public awareness of the connections between budget transparency and people’s daily lives to mobilize public support for reform.
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FULL REPORTS
The full report files are quite large. If you have problems with the files, try downloading the low-resolution versions.
Topics:
International
