Here are five key reflections and lessons from this year’s Summit, drawing on insights from the important conversations we had the opportunity to take part in:
1. Local fiscal openness works best when participation is intuitive, human, and grounded in everyday realities
Participation fails when it feels technical, intimidating, or inaccessible.
This was especially clear during the breakout session on “Transforming Public Management through Participatory Budgeting and Transparency”, where Erika Estrada Ruíz, Electoral Counselor at the Electoral Institute of Mexico City (IECM) shared their decade-long experience running different participatory budgeting models, with around eight million people eligible to participate in this fiscal openness exercise at the local level.
She noted that participatory budgeting only works when people can understand it, because the barriers are real. Many residents do not have the time or bandwidth to navigate complex government processes. Others are discouraged by technical language, bureaucratic steps, and unclear criteria. In some cases, misinformation, political clientelism, or lack of digital literacy can push people away from participating altogether.
These challenges explained why Mexico City intentionally designed a hybrid model that combines digital tools, neighborhood assemblies, civic education, financial incentives and active outreach to children, migrants, seniors, and residents abroad. These efforts not only widened the reach of their participatory budgeting exercise; it has also paved the way for Mexico City to receive more replicable, sustainable, creative, and novel project proposals from citizens.
2. Fiscal transparency matters, but fiscal accountability is what builds trust.
A recurring theme across panels was that transparency alone is not enough. Communities must be able to verify, question, and follow up on how public money is spent.
During the same participatory budgeting and transparency breakout session, Ani Tovmasyan, Project Director at Armavir Development Center of Armenia shared that when they started in 2016, citizen participation in budgeting was limited and symbolic. Now, through the community-led oversight mechanisms they have established, youth groups, women’s associations, neighborhood volunteers, and municipal focal points now collaborate to:
- monitor project progress;
- evaluate construction and service delivery;
- use digital tools to track milestones; and
- engage in participatory forums with local authorities.
Transparency made programs more visible. Monitoring and oversight made it real and felt by communities.
3. Political will and institutionalization will remain the strongest driving forces behind genuine public participation.
Throughout the Summit, officials and civil society reformers emphasized that fiscal openness thrives when leaders actively champion it, not merely permit it.
Mexico’s ability to sustain participatory budgeting for more than a decade comes from institutional backing and electoral oversight. Armenia’s community oversight thrives because national and municipal government leaders create space and mandates for participation. Speakers from Brazil and the Philippines reinforced this through their national and subnational level investments in participatory planning and budgeting.
Tools matter, but leadership and institutionalization transform tools into culture. OGP local initiatives progress not because they have technology, but because they have political champions willing to share decision-making power with citizens. In addition, their intentionality of building permanent legal frameworks and practices within the state structure is key to make public participation sustainable.
4. The Philippines is showing what OGP Local leadership looks like in practice.
Another energizing moment of the Summit was the side-event on the “Global Launch of the Philippine Agenda for the Localization of the Open Government Partnership”, a pioneering national government-led roadmap to embed open government principles in the planning, budgeting, and monitoring systems of cities and municipalities across the archipelago.
The Philippine delegation framed it with clarity and ambition. Open government must live in local plans and budgets, not just in national promises. Local governments need to build these plans with communities, not for them. Civil society, academia, and citizens are partners in governance. Treating them as anything less weakens the very idea of openness.
More than an announcement, the launch was a statement of leadership of the Philippines in the open government space. It signaled that the Philippines is ready not only to implement open government at home, but to guide and inspire other OGP members in localizing fiscal openness.
5. The future of open government will be built from the bottom up, and it will be co-created.
Across the different events held at the Summit, it was clear that local innovations are no longer peripheral; they are shaping global norms.
This is exactly the purpose of OGP Local—to identify, amplify, and support the reforms happening where public money is most visible, where democratic practice is most tangible, and where government is most accessible. This approach is also very in sync with IBP’s new strategy to put people and communities (especially those at the margins) at the heart of public resource decision-making at all levels local to global.
What Vitoria-Gasteiz taught us
Fiscal openness is more than a governance reform; it’s a culture of trust, shared responsibility, and genuine collaboration between governments and communities. It thrives on accessibility, accountability, and political courage, and on the belief that people have both the right and the ability to shape budget decisions.
Across the Vitoria-Gasteiz summit, government reform champions, civic leaders and other practitioners reminded us that the future of open government and fiscal openness is built from the ground up.
With every participatory budgeting assembly, every public hearing, every public council, every community monitoring initiative, and every state policy that brings public decisions closer to citizens, we move toward a world where public budgets truly belong to the people.
This story was produced with the financial support of the European Union
