We have just kicked off the next round of the Open Budget Survey with the participation of our biggest ever cohort of research collaborators across 125 countries.
The survey is the world’s only independent, comparative assessment of transparency, oversight and participation in national budgets. Most importantly, the Open Budget Survey is undertaken by local partners for local partners. It provides local organizations who spearhead the survey in each country the unique opportunity to collaborate in the collective research process alongside their peers worldwide using the same rigorous methodology to determine their ranking and identify country-specific reform priorities. Our process also allows an opportunity for governments to review the data and provide additional information that can inform the scoring process. As newcomers to the survey such as Ethiopia illustrate, this process creates much-needed space for dialogue between civil society and government to measure, monitor, and advance open budgeting practices. Tools like our calculator and the individual country summary reports provide actionable steps for governments to improve their practices.
Thanks to support from the European Union and UNICEF, we were able to heed calls from local civil society to expand into new countries for this next round: Central African Republic (with Afro-Leadership), Guinea (with Association des Blogueurs de Guinée), Guinea-Bissau (with Movimento Nacional da Sociedade Civil para a Paz, Democracia e Desenvolvimento), Montenegro (Institut Alternativa), Palestine (AMAN-Transparency Palestine), as well as Libya and Kosovo as pilots later this year.
On February 16th, we held the first workshop for researchers to kick off the process, which will be followed up with additional webinars and virtual guidance and mentoring.
To learn more about the Open Budget Survey and explore last round’s results, visit: https://internationalbudget.org/open-budget-survey. We thank our partners for this data driven partnership on research and advocacy and we hope you stay in touch as we embark on this journey! Please write to us at [email protected].