Budget (SAO0006)

• Strengthening Citizen Engagement During a Pandemic: A Look at São Paulo, Brazil (February 16, 2021)

Commitment no. 1: “Budget”
Institutionalize the participatory budget through the Municipal Participatory Council and civil society, in the 32 Subprefectures, creating rules and procedures to be followed by subprefects, including: newsletter (printed and online) and website, in friendly/easy-to-understand language, about implemented and proposed expenses by sector and project; creation of a public register of organizations and citizens for dissemination of information; broad and prior dissemination of participatory budget actions and discussions.
Commitment start and end date: January/2019 - August/2020
Lead implementing agency/actor
São Paulo Aberta/Secretariat of Municipal Government21
Commitment description
What is the public problem that the commitment will address?
Although there are mechanisms that allow citizens to participate in the budget of the city of São Paulo, there is pressure from civil society to better and expand the spaces and forms of participation. In addition, the need for clearer language in the provision of budgetary and financial information as well as a wider dissemination of this information have been pointed out.

Overall objective(s) and expected result(s)

With the implementation of this commitment, we expect to provide better conditions for social control of the municipal budget, as well as to improve and broaden the forms of participation by society
How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem?
By establishing a Working Group, with representatives from government and civil society, we intend to identify possibilities for improvement of social control and budgeting participation mechanisms. Another purpose of the commitment is to qualify the performance of counselors, providing them with more tools and information to fulfill their duties. In addition, it should improve the channels and tools of communication with the population, so as to qualify the access to information.

Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values?
This commitment aims to contribute to the improvement of mechanisms for social participation and control of the municipal budget, being relevant for the strengthening of citizen participation. In addition, it aims to contribute to the improvement of the budgetary information provided by the City of São Paulo, being relevant for strengthening and expanding transparency, access to information and, indirectly, public integrity.
Additional Information
Currently, popular participation in the development of budgetary items occurs through public hearings held at the 32 Subprefectures, as provided by Decree no. 57,802/2017. Decree no. 56,208/2015, regulating Articles of Law 15,764/2013, assigns to the Municipal Participatory Councils, among other responsibilities, the monitoring of budget execution within its territory. In addition, accounting data from the City of São Paulo are available on the Transparency Portal and budget data from the Budget and Finance System (SOF) are available through public APIs. Milestone activity with a verifiable deliverable
Start date:
End date:
Establish an intersecretariat Working Group with representatives of civil society from MSF, to improve the mechanisms for municipal budget social control.
February/2019
June/2019
Carry out and publicize a survey of projects and initiatives on budgeting participation existing in the City Hall.
July/2019
June/2020
Carry out actions to qualify the performance of municipal participatory counselors, including the provision of training through partnerships with public and private agencies, on subjects related to management and public policies, budget planning, social participation and access to data.
March/2019
July/2020
Expand and improve communication channels and tools with the population regarding planning, execution and budget control, adopting clear and simple language.

July/2019

July/2020
Ensure the implementation of a deliberative mechanism for participation, planning, execution and social control of the budget of the city of São Paulo through the Municipal Participatory Councils.
August/2019
August/2020

Contact information

Name of responsible person from implementing agency
Mauro Ricardo Machado Costa

Title

Secretary of Municipal Government
Implementing agency department
Supervision on Open Government Affairs (SAGA) - São Paulo Aberta
Email and phone
saopauloaberta@prefeitura.sp.gov.br +55 11 3113-9276

Other actors involved

State actors involved

Municipal Comptroller General’s Office (CGM); Municipal Secretariat of Management (SG); Municipal Secretariat of Subprefectures (SMSUB); Municipal Secretariat of Finance (SF);
Municipal Court of Accounts (TCM);
Special Secretariat of Social Relations (SERS)/Secretariat of Municipal Government (SGM).

Civil society actors involved

Associação de Projetos Integrados e Desenvolvimento Sustentável (PIDS);
Fundação Escola de Comércio Álvares Penteado (FECAP); Movimento Cultural das Periferias (MCP).

1. Budget [1]:

Commitment text:

Provide instruments of transparency on fiscal management, promoting wide publicity for them, including electronic means open to the public: the plans, budgets and “Leis de Diretrizes Orçamentárias” (LDO); the budget legal reporting (accountability reporting) and its respective legal and technical opinion and the fiscal management reports.

Milestones

• Establish an intersecretariat working group with representatives of civil society from FGC, to improve the mechanisms for municipal budget social control.

• Carry out and publicize a survey of projects and initiatives on budgeting participation that exist at City Hall.

• Carry out actions to facilitate the performance of municipal counselors, including the provision of training through partnerships with public and private agencies, on subjects related to management and public policies, budget planning, social participation, and access to data.

• Expand and improve communication channels and tools with the population regarding planning, execution, and budget control, adopting clear and simple language.

• Ensure the implementation of a participatory mechanism of budget planning and of social control of the city of São Paulo's budget execution through public hearings.

Start Date: January 2019

End Date: August 2020

Editorial note: to see the complete text, visit

https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Sao-Paulo_Action-Plan_2018-2020_EN.pdf

Context and Objectives

Overall objective and relevance

Participation in the budget is currently regulated by Decree 57,802 of 2017, which provides for public hearings in each of the 32 subprefectures for the preparation of the Multi-year Plan (2018–2021) and the Annual Budget Law. Public hearings are also required by the Fiscal Responsibility Law.

Despite the existence of this mechanism for the participation in the preparation of the budget, there is pressure from civil society for greater integration of civil society in the processes. One of the criticisms made by CSO on the subject is that the process of decentralization of the city is insufficient, ^[2] as there is no clear budget and allocation for the sub prefectures in terms of crucial local policies such as education, health, and culture. Past regional participatory processes were done but poorly integrated in the policy-making process. ^[3]

This commitment seeks to promote transparency regarding the planning and budget instruments of the city, by undertaking capacity-building activities on the one side (milestone 3) and support for the participatory process of the budget execution on the other (milestone 5). It also plans to undertake actions related to communication (milestones 2 and 4) and the creation of a public oversight forum with civil society participation (milestone 1). ^[4] It aims to make such instruments more transparent, promoting publicity and communication and enhancing civil society training to facilitate the understanding of the budget. Improving existing mechanisms of participation on planning and public oversight of the budget execution are also part of the objective

The new aspect brought forth by the commitment is the establishment of an Inter-secretarial working group (milestone 1), with representatives of civil society, to identify the possibilities of improving public oversight mechanisms and budget participation. Milestone 2 refers to the execution of an internal gathering of projects and initiatives on budgeting participation already in existence at City Hall. As for milestone 3, it seeks to address the capacity gap from the councillors regarding management and public policies, budget planning, social participation, and access to data.

With the change in the commitment (explained in the previous section), Commitment 1 has been restricted to a few transparency and oversight actions, which are already provided by law. The Fiscal Responsibility Law, [5] a major federal regulation with which states and municipalities must comply, already provides that fiscal management procedures be transparent and published in official communication channels, including websites. In accordance with this regulation, data and information on the budget plans are already available on São Paulo’s Transparency Portal. ^[6]

In short, one of the demands of civil society is to increase participation mechanisms, with more decentralized spaces, and to provide decentralized information about the budget allocation. The way the commitment is currently written does not address either of those demands.

Verifiability and potential impact

The IRM researcher believes that the commitment is specific enough to be verifiable but would require it to be more specific to be carried out and assessed adequately.

Milestone 1 refers to the establishment of an Inter-secretarial working group with civil society representatives who are members of the FGC to improve the mechanisms for society's control of the municipal budget. This working group’s composition, functioning, and prerogatives are unclear. Milestone 2 refers to conducting and disseminating a survey of existing projects and initiatives for budget participation in the city. The activity is verifiable, but it does not contribute in a major way to accomplishing the overall goal of the commitment.

Milestone 3 establishes the objective of improving the quality of the performance of municipal participatory councillors, encouraging training activities for this audience on issues that help in understanding the budget, social participation, and access to data. It is not clear which capacity gap the commitment aims to address or the scope of the training (how many councillors, from which policy areas).

Milestone 4 refers to expanding and improving communication channels and tools with the population regarding planning, execution, and budgetary control. In this specific framework, it is not clear which channels and communication tools should be improved and expanded. The text of the commitment makes reference to a newsletter and website that should contain information on expenditures executed and proposed by sector and by project. The details are yet to be defined in future implementation meetings, [7] so it will only be clear whether it will entail the creation of a new tool at a later stage.

Finally, milestone 5 refers to the adoption of a budget participation mechanism that works through public hearings. There are already legal frameworks that provide for these types of participatory processes. It is not clear what the new procedures are that this milestone will add to the already existing participatory processes.

The IRM researcher posits that this commitment does not add significant advancements for civic participation, particularly considering the demands from civil society explained above. The commitment provides for the implementation of mechanisms of participation related to the budget cycle of the municipality that already exist and are required by law (for instance, the realization of public hearings), or it provides the processes that are ongoing and expected of the administration (improve communication channels). While expanding and enhancing channels and communication tools for planning execution and budget control (milestone 4) are relevant to access to information, the wording is made in a very general and vague way, suggesting only minor improvements will stem from this milestone. The only new aspect, the creation of a working group, is not sufficiently specific to suggest that there will be any impact on city governance.

If implemented as written, the commitment and proposed actions are likely to have a minor impact on the city open government policies. As they provide policies that are already in place, they do not mean significant step towards the city's population being able to effectively influence the policies carried out in each territory nor improve transparency as to how the budget is executed.

Next steps

In order for the commitment to have a greater effect, the IRM researcher suggests the following guidelines:

• Bring more ambitious and innovative elements to the milestones related to improvement of communication channels;
• Define composition, functioning and prerogative of the working group provided in milestone 1;
• To be bold and ambitious on capacity-building objective in milestone 3, with a broad reach councillors and very specific goals in terms of gaps to be addressed;
• Incorporate the need to provide decentralized information to empower civil society and citizens alike.