Publishing Budget Law (RS0028)

COMMITMENT 1: Publishing of the Law on Budget of the Republic of Serbia in a machinereadable format
Q4 2018 - Q1 2019
Lead implementing agency Ministry of Finance
Description of Commitment
Problem addressed by the
commitment
The budget of the Republic of Serbia is not published in a
machine-readable format.
Main objective The Ministry of Finance will also publish the Law on Budget
of the Republic of Serbia in WORD and EXCEL formats, in
addition to the existing presentation in PDF format.
How will this commitment
contribute to problem solving?
The Law on Budget will be published in WORD and EXCEL
formats on the official website of the Ministry of Finance.
This would facilitate access to the content of the Law on
Budget for the general public, in accordance with the principle
of state administration transparency, thus simplifying its
downloading and electronic processing for subsequent
presentation.
This would improve interpretation of publicly available data
and consequently facilitate the use of such data.
The way in which this commitment is
relevant to further advancing OGP
values
Publishing of the budget in a machine-readable format is fully
compliant with the open government principles proclaimed by
the Open Government Partnership. Publishing data in a
machine-readable format would improve availability of data.
Additional information Implementation of this commitment does not require
additional budget funds.
Activity with a verifiable deliverable
and completion date
Start Date: End Date:
1. Law on Budget published also in a
machine-readable format on the
official website of the Ministry of
After the adoption of the Law
on Budget of the Republic of
Serbia for 2019
After the adoption of the
Law on Budget of the
Republic of Serbia for 2019
12
Finance
Contact information
Name of a responsible person in the
implementing agency
Branislav Stipanović, Head of the Group for IT Support to
Budget
Title, Department Budget Sector
Email and phone number branislav.stipanovic@mfin.gov.rs
Phone: 3642 915

1. Publishing Budget Law in a machine-readable format

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

Title: Publishing of the Law on Budget of the Republic of Serbia in a machine-readable format

The budget of the Republic of Serbia is not published in a machine-readable format.

The Ministry of Finance will also publish the Law on Budget of the Republic of Serbia in WORD and EXCEL formats, in addition to the existing presentation in PDF format.

For full commitment text, please refer to the National Action Plan at https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Serbia_Action-Plan_2018-2020_EN.pdf

Start Date: Q4 2018

End Date: Q1 2019

Serbia has a low level of budgetary data transparency, with few opportunities for citizen engagement in the budget process. The country scored 43% on budget openness in the Open Budget Index, ^[1] and the state budget is not openly licensed in a machine-readable format. [2] Poor oversight by the legislature exacerbates the problem, as the Budget Law has been adopted without purposeful parliamentary debate for two consecutive years due to obstruction of the debate procedure. [3]

Despite some positive developments, the problem of accessibility and readability of budget data remains. For example, although the Ministry of Finance (MoF) published a simplified citizens’ budget for 2018, [4] alongside some limited financial data in .xlsx formats, its analysis requires days of copying and comparing several different documents manually. [5]

The commitment’s objective is to facilitate access to the Budget Law of Serbia, simplify data processing, and reuse and enable its interpretation by the public. To that end, the government committed to publish the Budget Law in two additional formats (.docx and .xlsx) on the MoF web page. Though the commitment describes precise actions to be taken and is verifiable, it is unclear from the text of the commitment whether the data will be part of the official government Open Data Portal, ^[6] in line with the recently enforced Law on the eGovernment, ^[7] considering that thus far, the MoF has not had any datasets open on this portal.

The commitment is relevant for increasing opportunities to access and (re)use of data. However, if fully implemented as designed, this commitment would have a minor impact on changing the current state of budgetary openness in the country. On the positive side, it would proactively enable experts to analyse, interpret, and visualize budget data. [8] If implemented successfully, the commitment can also possibly motivate local administrations to open their budgets and also publish open data on budget expenditures. [9]

At the same time, this commitment has a negligible scope compared with what is needed for alignment with the leading world trends on accessibility of budget data. [10] Experts consulted by the IRM researchers believe that this commitment represents a minimum standard of data availability. [11] According to one CSO representative, the commitment is insufficient to achieve budget transparency, as it does not specifically apply to the budget execution but only to funds approved by the law. [12] Other experts note that the government proposed Microsoft formats that are not entirely open and free such as CSV.

Overall, the IRM researchers assess that publishing the Budget Law in only one recognized machine-readable format demonstrates a lack of ambition to reach the international standards in budget data openness. The commitment represents a small step toward increasing the supply of data but without attempting to take a holistic view of the potentials of data reuse and the necessary additional efforts to enable reuse. The IRM researchers could not obtain the official position on these issues, as the responsible body, the Ministry of Finance, did not accept the request for interview.

Next steps

The IRM researcher considers this commitment a first step for furthering budget data openness through the subsequent OGP cycles. As stated by Transparency Serbia, a more ambitious commitment on this theme would not only motivate the knowledge economy but also help the government receive valuable feedback, which can be used to improve data quality, better understand user needs, and better formulate and implement public policies. ^[13] 

IRM researchers recommend the following actions be taken to improve the commitment design in future action plans:

• To increase specificity, the MoF should commit to and explicitly communicate the commitment to publish data on the central government Open Data Portal, conforming with the Law on eGovernment [14] and the Regulation on the Mode of Operation of the Open Data Portal. [15] This way, the data will become centrally available. Compliance with the regulation will mean that the data are up-to-date and available in prescribed open formats.
• To increase the ambition and scope:
  • The MoF could increase the diversity of truly open formats available. The Open Data Standards Directory [16] explicitly indicates that DOC(X) does not represent a machine-readable format, in other words, the one that ensures that data can be read and manipulated, without requiring a precise proprietary software, such as XML, RSS feed, CSV, RDF, JSON, TXT, XLS (X), and KML. ^[17]
  • The OGP Working Group, the MoF, and civil society should include activities that openly encourage budget data (re)use, for instance the visualization of the draft budget law for 2018 and 2019 [18] or the pioneer initiative “Open Budget in Your City” [19] to present information on budget surplus and deficit in a sample of local communities. Additional activities could include organizing hackathons, offering incentives to the data science professionals, and publishing calls for innovative infographics, apps, factsheets, and interactive maps.
  • The MoF could learn from relevant international practices such as the Open Data Standards Directory on how governments could publish budget data.
  • The MoF should publish other documents relevant for fiscal transparency in machine-readable formats. For example, publication of the Law on Final Account of the Budget (which has not been adopted in Serbia for more than a decade) in open format could fill a critical gap. [20] Other documents include:
    • fiscal strategy
    • citizens’ budget
    • monthly budget execution reports
    • mid-year budget execution reports
    • year-end budget execution reports
    • final account of the budget

In addition to these, Transparency Serbia proposed that the following documents be published in open formats:

• Draft Budget Law
• Budget Law Proposal
• Other working documents (tables) created during the budget preparation and execution
• Data stemming from individual sources of income such as fees, revenues generated from the use of public funds, income from the sale of non-financial assets, income from borrowing and selling of financial assets.
• Through amendments to the Rules of Procedures of the National Assembly and their proper application, the Members of the Parliament should ensure legal and practical mechanisms that prevent the obstruction of parliamentary debate, especially when deciding about crucial national documents such as the Budget Law.

1. Publishing Budget Law in a machine-readable format

Completion: Not started:

The Ministry of Finance published the Budget Law only in the .docx format, [27] which cannot be deemed machine-readable. [28] The OGP working group considers this commitment as “not started.” [29] The government self-assessment report does not provide reasons why, nor did the Ministry of Finance representative.