Citizens Budget Draft (BA0007)

• First Steps Towards a Future of Open Government for Bosnia and Herzegovina (November 1, 2020)

Which public issue will be addressed by this obligation?
Generally speaking, governments are responsible to their citizens or at least they should be responsible for actions and policies they are implementing. Budget, as the basic instrument by which the government implements its policies and realizes plans, is usually very complex and difficult to understand by a large part of the public. Therefore, it is not only important that the budget is available to the public, but it is equally important that budget documentation is accessible and understandable to citizens.
According to the results of the International Budget Openness Research (IBP), the Budget Openness Index in Bosnia and Herzegovina for 2017 was only 35 points out of a total of 100 index points, which BiH puts in countries whose "government provides citizens with minimal budget information".
According to this survey, the worst segment, citizens' participation in the budget cycle, was rated with only nine index points.

What is the obligation?
Regarding the described situation , one of the or the first of the measures that the institutions of BiH should undertake is to make the information about the budget of the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina available and accessible in a simple, concise and transparent way to the citizens and the public in a form and content that would reflect their interest and needs.

This measure would be realized through the preparation and publication of the Budget for citizens publication, while the process of publishing the publication itself would imply several steps and the involvement of a number of actors. The essence of drafting a Budget for citizens is to make very complicated, professional and comprehensive information presented in a simple, concise and appealing way. The main objective is to: make citizens competent and interested to participate in budget processes

How will the fulfilment of the obligation contribute to the solving of the public problem?
The regular preparation and publication of the Budget for Citizens is a reflection of the best international practices and trends in the field of public finance transparency. Given that the state level of government has not had significant activities and initiatives in this field until now, by introducing the practice of compiling and publishing the Budget for Citizens, it is expected a strengthening of citizens' awareness and public accountability, as well as a much better rating of BiH institutions on the international scale budget transparency, measured primarily by the Budget Transparency Index, which will result in increased trust among citizens, donors and civil society organizations.

Why is this obligation relevant to OGP values?
The relevance of this measure to OGP values is reflected in the following facts:
• Through the implementation of this measure/obligation, for the first time information on the budget intended for citizens will be published, the quality of published information will be improved in relation to the needs of the target group, the availability and accessibility of information in the public will be improved.
• The obligation will directly affect the creation of preconditions and a favourable environment for the public to influence the decision-making process.

By achieving greater transparency and the sense of significant public oversight, the public officials' accountability towards their actions is expected.

Additional information
The purpose of this activity is to publish and distribute the Budget for Citizens of BiH Institutions for the first time and not only as an informative material of the Ministry of Finance and Treasury of BiH, which would formally comply with this obligation, but the result would be the document in which the citizens themselves participated and NGOs, which fully reflects their interests and needs. Also, it is envisaged that the entire process is implemented systematically and some kind of methodology/guidelines will be developed for the preparation of budgets for citizens, which would be used for the purposes of further training and dissemination of positive practice to all institutions and possibly other levels of government in order to achieve more transparency.
Although most of these activities will be realized within the staffing capacities of the Ministry of Finance and Treasury of BiH and BiH institutions, the BiH Ministry of Finance and Treasury will request a partner donor organization ready to support the planned activities, especially in the area of mentoring and expertise in this area, meetings and workshops, design and preparation of the document itself, as well as assistance in the distribution of the same and eventual procurement of the information tool for the publication of the data on the websites of the institutions of BiH.

Goals/activities
In cooperation with the NGO, we will identify the interests and needs of the beneficiary/target group, consider and process the collected information, then work out, write, design and publish the Budget for Citizens and distribute it to citizens through a web site and in a printed form.

Preparation of guidelines for the preparation of the Budget for Citizens for BiH Institutions and provision of education to institutions in connection with drafting the Budget for Citizens.

7. Drafting of the budget for citizens

Main Objective

"The regular preparation and publication of the Budget for Citizens is a reflection of the best international practices and trends in the field of public finance transparency. Given that the state level of government has not had significant activities and initiatives in this field until now, by introducing the practice of compiling and publishing the Budget for Citizens, it is expected a strengthening of citizens' awareness and public accountability, as well as a much better rating of BiH institutions on the international scale budget transparency, measured primarily by the Budget Transparency Index, which will result in increased trust among citizens, donors and civil society organizations."

Milestones

"7.1. In cooperation with the NGO, we will identify the interests and needs of the beneficiary/target group, consider and process the collected information, then work out, write, design and publish the Budget for Citizens and distribute it to citizens through a web site and in a printed form.

7.2. Preparation of guidelines for the preparation of the Budget for Citizens for BiH Institutions and provision of education to institutions in connection with drafting the Budget for Citizens."

Editorial Note: For the complete text of this commitment, please see Bosnia and Herzegovina's action plan at https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/bosnia-and-herzegovina-action-plan-2019-2021/.

Commitment Analysis
The purpose of commitment 7 is to prepare and publish budget information in a user-friendly format for the general public. This publication will entail budgetary information of state-level institutions. [78]

The commitment is relevant to OGP value access to information, as it will improve access to budgetary information of state-level institutions. While budget information in BiH is publicly available, it is not published in a citizen-friendly manner so that the general public understands how public money is to be spent. [79] So far, budgets that can be understood by citizens have been adopted in several cities, including Tuzla, Zenica, Bijelinja, and Banja Luka. [80] The Foundation "Centre for Advocacy of Citizens' Interests" (CPI) created a special website on public spending with infographics for all levels of government. [81]

The International Budget Partnership reports in its 2019 Open Budget Index that BiH has not produced a state-level citizens' budget (nor has it produced a state-level citizens' budget at any time the IBP has surveyed for this). IBP recommends that BiH "Produce and publish the Citizens Budget and Mid-Year Review online." [82]

The commitment also is relevant to civic participation because of the proposed engagement with civil society to identify and determine the information to be contained in a budget for citizens. However, it doesn't aim to introduce specific measures for civic participation in budget formulation, adoption, or implementation, which are currently nonexistent in BiH. The IBP Open Budget Index 2019 scores BiH just 7 out of 100 on its participation criteria. The IBP recommends developing mechanisms to engage the public during budget formulation and to actively engage with vulnerable and underrepresented groups. [83]

Currently, the Ministry in cooperation with its partners – the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the civil society organization EDA Banja Luka – are implementing several preparatory activities that should ensure deployment of a user-friendly and usable budget for citizens, one based on the actual needs. For this purpose, workshops, [84] surveys, [85] interviews, and other types of analyses are planned with different types of stakeholders. [86]

The proposed commitment has a moderate potential for impact on public accessibility of budget information. [87] The foreseen collaborative nature for developing a budget for citizens could ensure that relevant and understandable information is published. This will increase transparency of state-level spending and accessibility to such information for citizens. However, the commitment lacks the sort of public outreach component that could ensure wide public uptake and larger numbers of the population accessing and using budget information. Ensuring wide dissemination of the citizens' budget publication and organization of targeted promotional events would help the publication reach the general public but also specific civil society groups that should benefit from the newly available budgetary information for their advocacy purposes.

A transformational commitment could seek to use the budget for citizens as a way to engage citizens in the development of the state budget itself, helping identify citizen priorities and provide feedback before the budget is formally adopted. This commitment could also seek to introduce mechanisms for participatory budgeting at the state, entity, or local levels of government.

Commitment 7. Drafting the budget for citizens

Complete:

Aim of the commitment

The Ministry of Finance and Treasury of BiH aimed to introduce the practice of preparing and publishing a Budget for Citizens to improve financial transparency of the state-level government. Although the Ministry regularly published the annual budget for the state-level government, this commitment would publish budget information in a user-friendly format for the general public.

Did it open government?

Marginal

The Ministry of Finance and Treasury of BiH completed all activities planned as part of this commitment.

The ministry, supported by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), organized several workshops and focus groups to collect comments on the proposed methodology for preparing and publishing the Budget for Citizens of state-level institutions. These gatherings included 21 representatives from public institutions and 8 civil society representatives.

These stakeholders wanted more information on the state of public debt, what is financed from reserve funds, data on salaries of civil servants and appointed persons, connections with strategic budget documents, and public procurement. After these consultations and changes to the methodology (by adding data on public debt, reserve funding, and salaries), the ministry prepared and published the Budget for Citizens, [1] which the Council of Ministers of BiH also published. [2]

The Budget for Citizens provides useful and user-friendly information on budget users, allocations of the budget by institutions and programs, and includes various visual data (infographics, statistics, etc.). Civil society representatives said it provides a good overview of how the state government is financed and how funding is distributed. [3]

After its publication, the Budget for Citizens received some media attention, [4] however it was not subject to widespread public dissemination activities and remains unknown to many citizens and CSOs. The IRM researcher found it was not easy to browse and access the Budget for Citizens through basic internet and website searches. This may be because it is currently located in an old news section of the ministry’s website which is being revised at the end of 2021. [5]

Implementing this commitment advances open government, in particular civic participation, as demonstrated through the positive collaboration between government institutions and civil society to develop the Budget for Citizens. However, despite the development and publishing of a detailed Budget for Citizens for the first time in BiH, its wider use for financial transparency remains limited. Civil society suggested creating an application that would provide diverse data in graphics to improve access. [6] The ministry could also disseminate the budget using a broad range of communication channels, including through radio and social media, and even provide physical copies of the Budget for Citizens in local libraries and other community locations. [7] The next action plan will contain a commitment on improving budget transparency, which will introduce the Budget for Citizens with disaggregated institution-by-institution budget and spending information. [8] It is important that this information will be published in open formats, and consistently across relevant institutions.