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

2. The fiscal Transparency Voyage

3. 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

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

5. Open budget surveys _ cont.
South Africa scored highly in 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

6. 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 )

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

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

11. Next steps?
……scoping and consultation

12. 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