ICT for Transparency – International Experience

Kristin Sinclair, Governance Operations Officer, World Bank

The way to make

government responsible is to hold it accountable. And the way to make government accountable is to make it transparent so that the American people know exactly what decisions are being made, how they´re being made, and whether their interests are being well served.

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Public expenditures on education

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Newspaper and radio campaigns and posters in schools

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The power of information

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Year Share of funds reaching

the school

1995 24%

2001 80%

Showing public expenditures in Australia…

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…and helping citizens to contact their MP

Citizen Reporting in Great Britain

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Performance monitoring of schools in Philippines

Coordinating volunteers in Russia

Performance monitoring in Moldova:

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Lots of data is available - but how to interpret the data?

Budgets vs. execution?

Base component vs. special means?

Will I end up “double-counting” expenditures if I add local to central government spending?

Special means vs. special funds?

Local budget vs. state budget

What about “state social insurance fund” and “mandatory health insurance fund”

To do analytical work with available data you need:

• An intimate knowledge of Moldova’s budget classification

• An accountant’s understanding of how the public sector spends

• Patience to re-type word files into excel

• And, even then, you are very limited in what you can look at because only aggregate data are available

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BOOST - All public expenditures in one excel file

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Per pupil spending in education

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Deprivation index

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Equity of education spending Per pupil spending vs. deprivation index

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Next steps

1. Citizens and civil society demand more data and information on how their government functions

2. Government shifts away from presenting pre-packaged reports toward giving its citizens the tools and the data necessary to hold it accountable

3. Citizens and civil society develop additional tools based on data that is now publicly available

4. Citizens and civil society demand changes in policy based on an analysis of available data

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