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The Next Frontier of Fiscal Openness Forging a Transformational GIFT-OGP Collaboration

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Remarks at the GIFT Workshop, June 20, 2016

Fiscal transparency resides at the very core of open government.  Forging a stronger collaboration between the Open Government Partnership (OGP) and the Global Initiative on Fiscal Transparency (GIFT), which leads the OGP Fiscal Openness Working Group, is a crucial, mutually beneficial opportunity that can multiply collective impact.  

We meet at an inflection point for OGP.  This year’s UN General Assembly in September will mark the first five years since the launch of OGP.  There have been impressive initial accomplishments – in just five years, 69 countries have joined OGP, along with thousands of civil society organizations, and they have together generated thousands of commitments.  

But over the next five years, success will not be measured by the number of countries or number of commitments, but by whether OGP delivers a transformative impact in the lives of citizens, and by whether OGP makes a measurable improvement in key areas such as fiscal transparency, open contracting or combating corruption.

Here, fiscal openness has a central role.  It is a key eligibility criterion for countries to join OGP and represents among the most popular commitment being made in OGP action plans.  Despite this, only 16 percent of fiscal commitments are assessed to be potentially transformative, and only four percent are completed – and we look to GIFT, as our most mature area of open government, to raise these percentages.

To raise transformative impact of fiscal transparency commitments in OGP, I wanted to share three key attributes and strengths of GIFT and OGP that we can together leverage further in the next five years to deliver greater transformative impact.

First, government-civil society co-creation is unique attribute of GIFT and OGP alike. Civil society brings the voice, concerns and aspirations of ordinary citizens, and they bring external pressure and energy to make governments responsive to citizens.  Yet the extent of genuine co-creation seems quite uneven.  

In addition to genuinely co-creating OGP action plans, there also appears to significant scope for stronger civic participation within key commitment areas.  Across the board, transparency accounts for the majority of commitments in OGP action plans, accounting for 70% of total commitments.  And this is indeed of foundational importance.  In OGP commitments on fiscal openness, transparency is the dominant thrust, with 95% of commitments tagged as such.  

Despite this, there is much progress to be made:  data from the Open Budget Survey 2015 (OBS) showed that 30 of the 48 OGP countries evaluated in the survey provide insufficient budget information to the public, receiving an average score of 58 out of 100 on the Open Budget Index. But the promise of OGP lies not only in transparency in government, but also participation by citizens and civil society, and responsiveness of government to that civic input.  Citizen participation in the budget is crucial because the budget is fundamentally a plan on how to spend citizens’ money.  In this regard, while 95% of OGP commitments are tagged as fiscal openness, we only see four percent tagged as participatory budgeting, and only eight percent as citizen budgets or downstream social audits.

When it comes to public participation, OGP countries scored an average of 36 out of 100 in the Open Budget Index, which means that they provide few opportunities for citizens or civil society to engage in budget processes.  Together, we need to raise civic participation in budgeting as the next frontier of fiscal openness because it can be hugely transformational for both governments and citizens alike.

  • Four years ago, in my position as VP of the World Bank Institute, we supported a South-South exchange on participatory budgeting between the conflict-ridden South Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Puerto Alegre in Brazil.  Inspired by this, the local government set aside a portion of the budget on whose allocation citizens could vote using mobile phones. When citizens saw roads and schools that they had voted for being repaired, tax collection jumped 16 times, which demonstrated an increase in trust in government.  

  • In Vihiga, Kenya, social audits by the public of government projects at the municipal level is estimated to have reduced corruption by 20%.  

  • The Philippines stands out as an excellent example of a country that has not only led in fiscal transparency but has also innovated with civic participation in budgeting through a people’s budget, bottom-up participatory budgeting and participatory social audits.  We are seeing the benefits not just in civic participation in budget formulation and execution but also in downstream service delivery. The Philippines is crowdsourcing citizen feedback on service delivery through mobile phones and internet on whether teachers, textbooks, and transfer payments are being received by citizens, and government responsiveness to that feedback.  This produces tangible benefits in the lives of citizens while also generating political dividends.  

Participation is the 10th principle of GIFT.  It will be immensely helpful if, as we head into the OGP Global Summit in Paris, we can join forces with GIFT to make a collective commitment to raise the ambition of civic participation in budget formulation, execution and service delivery in OGP action plans across a significant proportion of the OGP countries.  And we can follow up in our OGP countries to support countries in this dimension.

Second, peer-to-peer learning and support: GIFT and its leadership of the Fiscal Openness Working Group represents one of our more effective working groups for peer learning.  Through this workshop, GIFT is already taking peer support to the next level, moving beyond simply showcasing innovations to collectively working together and creating a peer support group and resource network that can outlast the vicissitudes of political turbulence and leadership changes.

At the same time, we can work together to better integrate peer support in national action plans and implementation.  At present, this real-time input into action plan design and implementation works imperfectly due to a variety of constraints, including the tight timeline of action plans, Ministries of Finance not being the focal point OGP participation in many OGP countries, and limited capacity of civil society.  

For our part, in OGP, we should look to introduce a more upstream opportunity in national action plan development for peer input from the Fiscal Openness Working Group.  We could work together to link the OGP focal point with the Ministry of Finance, which does not always take place, so that the fiscal commitments are fully rooted in ownership and leadership by Ministry of Finance.  And we can join forces on a trust fund that we are looking to mobilize to help governments and civil society with capacity building for implementation.  

More broadly, it will be hugely impactful if GIFT leaders from government and civil society could join forces, heading into the OGP Global Summit in Paris, to collectively commit not only to raise the ambition of fiscal transparency and civic participation commitments, but also proactively support peer governments and civil society organizations to achieve these ambitious commitments.  

Third, joint research, learning, advocacy and communications: In OGP, we have a growing body of evidence on country’s implementation of OGP commitments through the Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM).  GIFT is collecting a body of evidence on the impact of fiscal openness.  As we seek to inspire cabinets and civil society on open government, the combined bodies of evidence and results stories will be incredibly influential, as will joint advocacy and communications when countries are launching action plans or IRM reports, or at OGP Global Summits, which GIFT has been very effective at leveraging strategically.  Above all, we should seek to disseminate compelling evidence and inspirational results stories to stakeholders, including the general public, to create a durable demand – and movement – for fiscal openness and open government.  

As we head into the next five years, let us build on the inextricable interdependency between GIFT and OGP to catapult fiscal openness and civic participation to the next level across OGP countries, in order to deliver genuinely transformative impact for citizens.  

Filed Under: Anti Corruption and Integrity Asset Disclosure Beneficial Ownership Challenges and Solutions Education Fiscal Openness National Public Service Delivery Publication of Budget/Fiscal Information
Open Government Partnership