Citizens Budgets (RO0036)

Status quo or problem addressed by the commitment Public budgets are drafted based on the economic and functional structure of public administration and are used as such in the accounting system of public institutions. The budget is presented to the public in this same format. Even when the draft budget is published in a timely manner for public debate, the format of the document is complicated, even for citizens with high education but not trained in this particular field. This issue is a major hindrance for relevant citizen engagement in budgetary allocation decisions. Main objective Initiate the use of Citizens Budgets as a compulsory mechanism of fiscal budgetary transparency in the adoption of public budgets. Brief description of commitment The commitment aims to promote Citizens’ Budgets – public budgets presented in a manner that is understandable to the public, in both central and local administration, to ensure fiscal and budgetary transparency. OPG challenge addressed by the commitment Effectively managing public resources; Improving public services Relevance The commitment is introducing an efficient tool to facilitate citizen engagement in one of the most important decision-making processes: the adoption of public budgets. Ambition The intended result is a major change in the public budgets adoption mechanism.

7. Citizens Budgets

The commitment aims to promote Citizens’ Budgets – public budgets presented in a manner that is understandable to the public, in both central and local administration, to ensure fiscal and budgetary transparency. The commitment is introducing an efficient tool to facilitate citizen engagement in one of the most important decision-making processes: the adoption of public budgets.

Main Objective:

Initiate the use of Citizens Budgets as a compulsory mechanism of fiscal budgetary transparency in the adoption of public budgets.

Milestones:

6. • Draft a model for the Citizens Budget based on the 2016 national budget
   • Gather citizens and civil society feedback on the proposed Citizens Budget model and develop a Guide for drafting Citizen Budgets
   • Pilot Citizen Budgets in at least 15 municipalities (varied types)
   • Drafting and presenting the Citizen Budget for the 2018 national budget
   • Public awareness actions to promote the Citizen Budget
   • Drafting and adoption of norms introducing Citizen Budgets for all public authorities
   • Develop, start and implement a training / assistance program for public authorities regarding Citizen Budgets

Responsible Institution: Ministry of Public Finance (MFP)

Supporting Institution(s): Chancellery of the Prime-Minister (CPM), Secretariat General of the Government (SGG), Ministry of Regional Development and Public Administration (MDRAP), Ministry for Public Consultations and Civic Dialogue (MCPDC), Funky Citizens, Centre for Public Innovation

Start date: 2016                                                                     End date: June 2018

Editorial Note: The commitment text is abridged. The full text can be found in the OGP 2016–2018 national action plan.

Commitment Aim

This commitment started from a proposal of civil society and aimed to create more opportunities for citizens to participate in the budgeting process by providing plain-language budget information and publishing it alongside the official annual budget. [58] The commitment aimed to design a template narrative to explain national budgets and a guide for how to design narratives for public budgets. It also aimed to pilot the explanation of local budgets, raise public awareness on explained budgets, require public authorities to explain their budgets, and train and assist them to comply with this obligation.

STATUS

Midterm: Not Started

This commitment was not started. The MFP had to collaborate with civil society on this commitment, as it could not hire graphic designers or acquire graphic design software necessary for the editing of the Citizen Budgets brochure. [59] Therefore the MFP met in 2016 and 2017 with representatives of civil society to discuss the cocreation of the template narrative. According to the MFP representative, although the MFP put forward several drafts text and numbers for the template narrative, civil society did not graphically edit the brochure, as they promised during the 2016 meeting. [60]

End-of-term: Not Started

This commitment has not advanced beyond what was accomplished at the midterm assessment. [61]

Did it Open Government?

Access to information: Did not change

Civic participation: Did not change

As the commitment was not started, it cannot have opened government. However, a civil society representative argues progress was booked on the principles behind citizen budgets. For instance, the MFP created Trasparenta-Bugetara.gov.ro—a national platform aimed at monitoring financial and legal statements of public entities in Romania—and added an educational video that explains how to work your way through the open budget data effectively. [62] Additionally, in 2018 the MFP started publishing in bulk and automatically updating a set of performance indicators and contact details for all taxpaying operators in Romania. These performance indicators and contact data are extracted from the annual financial statements the economic operators disclose. [63] Nevertheless, the data identifiers (i.e. the column headers of the .csv files) are missing, making the interpretation of the data very difficult. [64]

Though the portal Trasparenta-Bugetara.gov.ro is not user-friendly, it provides large and good quality datasets [65] that some NGOs have used to build monitoring applications on—e.g. OpenBudget.ro. According to the MFP representative, the MFP was unable to create synergies with a similar private sector initiative http://www.OpenBudget.ro, which explains national budgets through graphics and charts.

Carried forward?

This commitment will be continued in the 2018–2020 national action plan as Commitment 3: “Citizens Budgets.”

[58] Bogdan Grunevici, Ministry of Public Finances, interview by IRM researcher on 14 November 2018. According to the interview with Grunevici, the commitment was proposed by Mr. Codru Vrabie, from Funky Citizens.

[59] Government Emergency Ordinance 26/2012 on certain measures to reduce public expenditure and enhance financial discipline and on modifying and complementing certain normative acts, is available [in Romanian] at https://goo.gl/ngTEtz. Article 3 does not allow the MFP to dedicate resources to acquire goods for protocol or representation purposes

[60] Bogdan Grunevici, Ministry of Public Finances, interview by IRM researcher on 14 November 2018.

[61] “National Action Plan 2016–2018: Self-assessment report”, Open Government Partnership, 2018, page 33, available [in Romanian] at https://bit.ly/2vv2yw7.

[62] Elena Calistru, Funky Citizens, interview by IRM researcher on 13 November 2018.

[63] Bogdan Grunevici, Ministry of Public Finances, interview by IRM researcher on 14 November 2018.

[64] Economic operators identifiers, clustered by county are available at https://bit.ly/2WgYb75.

[65] Bogdan Grunevici, Ministry of Public Finances, interview by IRM researcher on 14 November 2018.