TRANSPARENCY AND PUBLIC PARTICIPATION OPEN BUDGETING TRANSPARENCY AND PUBLIC PARTICIPATION National Treasury: Raquel Ferreira Public Service Accountability Monitor: Zukiswa Kota

The fiscal Transparency Voyage

Open government partnership South Africa is a founding member of the OGP Commitment made in Country National Action Plan includes CSOs and Treasury activities in the budget process Steward of the Global Initiative on Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) 1

Open budget surveys 2010: South Africa ranked first 2015: South Africa ranked third (expanded questionnaire) 2

Open budget surveys _ cont. South Africa scored highly in 2015 Survey in its 3 main areas of budget accountability: Budget transparency: Ranked 3rd Public participation: Ranked joint 5th Institutional oversight: Ranked joint 2nd South Africa was one of only four countries that performed solidly across all three categories 3

Open doors? “Improving the Open Budgeting process by making information publicly available in an accessible platform allowing citizens to track government spending on commitments”   (Extracted from the 3rd South African OGP National Action Plan )

South africa’s current OGP commitments _ cont. Milestones Possible Indicators National Treasury will continue to provide information and support to civil society organisations to enable them to publish citizen’s guides to the budget Number of citizen’s guides published by CSOs per year (proposed target=1) National Treasury will collaborate with CSOs to discuss possible development of an interactive portal to furnish the public with extensive information on the budget and expenditure outcomes to make data more accessible and to aid civil society in their analysis Development of a data portal for budgets (by 2017) 10

Milestone: 31st August 2016….. Kay Brown – National Treasury: Budget Office: Expenditure Planning Raquel Ferreira – National Treasury: Budget Office: Expenditure Planning Aisha Adam – National Treasury: Budget Office: Budget Reform Hennie Swanepoel – National Treasury: Budget Office: Regulatory Impact Assessment Gillian Wilson - National Treasury: Public Finance: Central Government and Administration Nompumelelo Radebe - National Treasury: Public Finance: Justice and Protection Services Mbali Buthelezi - National Treasury: Public Finance: Education and Related Departments Rigard Lemmer – National Treasury: Intergovernmental Relations: Provincial Budget Analysis Kirsten Pearson – Government Technical Advisory Centre: Economies of Regions Learning Network Ronette Engela -  Government Technical Advisory Centre: Public Expenditure and Policy Analysis Corruption Watch Centre for Municipal Research and Advice (Remember) Code4SA (Nadia Thorn) Rural Health Advocacy Project (RHAP) Equal Education Law Centre (EELC) (Daniel Linde) Right to Know (R2K) Studies in Poverty and Inequality Institute (SPII) (Daniel McLaren) Equal Education (EE) (Andile Cele) MobiSAM (Carol Khene) PSAM (Zukiswa Kota) Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (Wiser) (Lisa Vetten) Black Sash (Elroy Paulus)?? (awaiting clear confirmation) 14

participation _ cont. National Treasury data portal Local Government data available since 2006/07 Two initial focus areas are: an informative and educational citizen’s guide to their own local municipal budgets detailed financial data that will enable researchers and developers to develop their own Apps 16

Considerations going forward The destination? “an interactive data portal to furnish the public with extensive information on the budget and expenditure outcomes…” 17

Next steps? ……scoping and consultation

Assistance from the network Effective consultation strategies Mobilising technical support (eg) Partner exchanges Motivating MoF and CSO Troubleshooting Input on applications eg Open Data Fiscal Package