Open Information on Budgets and Expenditures (CA0038)

The Government of Canada will publish expanded information and data on federal
spending to help Canadians understand, and hold government accountable for, the use of public monies.

Commitment 9. Open Information on Budgets and Expenditures

Commitment Text:

The Government of Canada will publish expanded information and data on federal spending to help Canadians understand, and hold government accountable for, the use of public monies.

One of the most important things Canadians want from their government is information on how their tax dollars are being spent. The budget and expenditures process can often be unclear to citizens, and it is the government's responsibility to make every effort to ensure that taxpayers understand how their money is being spent.

Canada has demonstrated clear leadership in providing Canadians with access to information on government expenditures. Since 2003, federal departments and agencies have proactively disclosed information about government operations on their websites (e.g., travel, contracts, hospitality expenditures) to allow Canadians and Parliament to better hold the government and public sector officials to account. Proactively disclosed information is currently fragmented, since it is published on more than a hundred individual departmental websites. Under our new action plan, Canadians will be provided with single-window access for searching and comparing this information across government.

To ensure that Canadians have the information they need on government finances and expenditures, we will provide enhanced online tools that give a clear picture of the financial expenditures of federal organizations. These tools will provide innovative visualizations of data, interactive infographics, and public reports released as interactive documents. Using these tools, Canadians will be able to track government spending by departments and agencies over time, and more effectively compare and contrast expenditures across departments.

Deliverables to be completed in 2014-16:

• Launch a new interactive online service that enables Canadians to review and visualize federal spending broken down by department, and to compare expenditures across departments. Consultations with Canadians will be completed to test and ensure the effectiveness of this new online service.
• Provide single-window, searchable access to information that is proactively disclosed by departments and agencies (e.g., travel and hospitality, contracts, grants and contributions).
  • Standardize procedures for publishing mandatory proactive disclosure information by federal departments and agencies.
• Make all data from charts and tables in Budget 2015 available in machine-readable formats to facilitate analysis by citizens and parliamentarians.

Responsible institution: Treasury Board Secretariat

Supporting institution(s): None

Start date: November 2014   End date: 30 June 2016

Commitment Aim:

The aim of this commitment is to increase transparency and accountability by providing Canadians with additional information and data related to the spending practices of the federal government.

STATUS

Mid-term: Substantial

As was detailed in the mid-term report, a new online tool—the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) Infobase—for visualizing federal spending was launched in April 2015. It is “a searchable online database providing financial and human resources information on government operations.”

The first phase of the proactive disclosure portal, the second milestone under the commitment, was launched in November 2014 in the form of the Search Government Contracts service detailed under the eighth commitment of this second action plan on Open Contracting (see the previous commitment above). The third milestone was completed.

End of term: Substantial

The first milestone is complete, as the TBS Infobase was not only established, but also enhanced to include a range of options for users to view and explore government spending information. They can view infographics, search information by department, and create a dashboard that provides information using a range of different visuals.  The second milestone is still limited in completion and has been rolled into the next action plan.

Did it open government?

Access to information: Marginal

The TBS Infobase does not provide new information, but does repackage existing information and makes it more accessible and understandable by providing visualization and comparison features. While much of the data provided on the TBS Infobase is available for download via open data, it is not on the TBS Infobase page itself.

Providing the open format on the TBS Infobase site, instead of prompting users to leave the site in search of downloadable formats, would enhance the usability of the new service.

The proactive disclosure portal is too limited in completion to have made any significant difference in the openness of government. There is confusion around the “single window” referenced in this commitment. At the mid-term mark, government interviewees had indicated that the Search Government Contracts service, outlined in the eighth commitment, would provide a platform that can be built on to allow searchable access to other categories of information detailed in the federal proactive information disclosure policy. However, the Search Government Contracts service is not the “single window” detailed in the commitment. Information provided to the IRM researcher at the end of term also notes that completed access to information requests are searchable via the open.canada.ca website. This leads to confusion over where the “single window” resides.

The Canadian government published data from the 2015 federal budget. Charts and tables from the 2015 federal budget are accessible on the open.canada.ca website. Users can download data tables in both official languages (French and English) in either .CSV or Excel formats. Additionally, the federal budget document is available in French and English in PDF format. Although this milestone only stipulated the provision of 2015 budget information, the government released charts and tables from the 2016 budget. However, there is, as yet, no indication that civil society or data users consider the TBS Infobase to have significantly changed openness.

Public Accountability: Marginal

Budget and spending information allows citizens to better track the use of their tax money. This commitment allows users to assess that information in a way, which can make it more accessible and understandable. However, it is too early for accountability results to come from this information – so far, the commitment has only enabled government practice to be subject to future accountable actions.

Carried forward?

This commitment, particularly the second (incomplete) milestone, has been carried into the next action plan. Commitment 10 of the third national action plan is to increase transparency around budget and other department of finance information. Milestones include:

• Starting with Budget 2017, make all data from budget charts and tables available in near real time to facilitate analysis by citizens and parliamentarians.
• Post publicly the list of briefing note titles prepared by Department of Finance officials on a regular basis, in order to be transparent about issues raised.
• Explore options to increase the transparency of the budget pre-consultation process.  ^{Government of Canada, Third National Action Plan, http://open.canada.ca/en/content/third-biennial-plan-open-government-partnership}