Global Stock-Take of Social Accountability Initiatives for Budget Transparency and Monitoring : Key Challenges and Lessons Learned
Budgets are key documents that lay out a government's economic priorities in terms of policies and programs. Budget transparency refers to the extent and ease with which citizens can access information about and provide feedback on government...
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| Format: | Knowledge Economy Study |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
Washington, DC
2014
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/09/18341625/global-stock-take-social-accountability-initiatives-budget-transparency-monitoring-key-challenges-lessons-learned http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16661 |
| Summary: | Budgets are key documents that lay out a
government's economic priorities in terms of policies
and programs. Budget transparency refers to the extent and
ease with which citizens can access information about and
provide feedback on government revenues, allocations, and
expenditures. Budget monitoring entails using such
information to analyze, critique, and track government
finances in order to provide this feedback. Budget
transparency is a prerequisite for public participation and
accountability, which are instrumental for a democratic and
legitimate budget process. Both budget transparency and
monitoring efforts also help remove institutional
bottlenecks that result in delayed budget allocations,
thereby jeopardizing the delivery of vital services to
people. Even though they have a far-reaching impact on the
lives of people, opening up budgets beyond the exclusive
domain of policy makers and administrators is a relatively
recent phenomenon that has gained momentum in the last two
decades. The stock taking exercise illustrates the range of
mechanisms involved in Budget Transparency and Monitoring
(BT&M) in different contexts and demonstrates
significant promise of influencing governance processes and
outcomes. Finally, there is a dearth of literature on
initiatives that have not achieved their goals, which would
allow lessons to be drawn from these failures. There are
incentives to document successes rather than failures, but
there is value in documenting failures because this allows
for a better understanding of the challenges and
opportunities that may be useful to consider when designing
future BT&M interventions. |
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