Anti-corruption activists in Ukraine have developed Internet-based local budget visualization platforms for city councils, in the hope that embezzlement by public officials will wither under the online scrutiny of the public.
The
expert and lobbying group Reanimation Package of Reforms has already
passed the platforms free-of-charge to some city councils, while the
Finance Ministry on Sept. 15 opened access to its e-data.gov.ua portal, which has data on public spending.
Currently
the e-data portal allows the public to search through transactions made
by public fund administrators via the state treasury – a total of
100,000 transactions per day. The search parameters include the name of
the transaction parties, the transaction date, and the name of the
contractor.
Meanwhile, the local budget
visualization platforms have already been put into use by Vinnytsia,
Lviv, Ternopil, Cherkassy, Ivano-Frankivsk and Kherson city councils,
and will be scaled out further.
Volodymyr
Tarnay, head of the Center for Political Studies and Analysis and an
Reanimation Package of Reforms expert, said the “unprecedented
transparency” provided by the new online budget-monitoring platforms
would cut the level of corruption in the state.
“These
instruments will allow all citizens in the near future to get access to
information on how the authorities at all levels, state utility
companies, and state enterprises spend public money. Everyone will be
able to watch it online,” Tarnay said at a media breakfast on Oct. 7.
Apart
from the data on transactions made via the treasury on 76,000 entities
spending public funds that are already on e-data portal, reports on the
completion of budget programs, and actual contracts of public
procurement deals, are also to be published online. The integrated
OpenBudget platform, created on the basis of the RPR’s local platforms,
will be completed by the Finance Ministry by the end of 2016.
Via
OpenBudget, experts are aiming to integrate a range of platforms for
monitoring public spending, including tools for overseeing local
budgets, and the ProZorro electronic state procurement project, to
ensure better control over all public finances, for ease of maintenance,
and to ensure compatibility.
The next step is
to gather together the full budgets of local and state authorities by
the end of November, and the incomes and outflows of municipal and state
enterprises by mid-January. By the end of January, the portal will be
complete.
The Finance Ministry has also declared
publically that it will disclose annually the key performance
indicators of all authorities and entities that send in budget requests
to the ministry. With that data, the public will be able to evaluate
efficiency of those who spend public funds, the ministry says.
“When
this web portal is fully operational it will be the best, the most
transparent portal in the world,” said Victor Maziarchuk, chief of the
expert group on public finance of Reanimation Package of Reforms.
There
are 74 authorities on the national level that are obliged to publish
their budget information by law, but only 35 of them currently do so.
So
far, the visualization of city budgets has proven successful, and the
leaders of the project, financed by European Commission, the United
Nations Development Program, and the Renaissance foundation, plan a
further rollout for council and oblast budgets.
The
visualization tool allows the public to track not only expenses on each
sphere, such as spending on education or health per person, but also to
monitor specific projects, particularly in infrastructure. For
instance, users can access a spending map that shows the purpose and
amount of money spent on specific streets, or even individual houses.
A
budget calendar tool also allows the public to monitor the progress of
local budget spending, and even get involved in budget planning
themselves.
The budget transparency initiative
started in 2013, under ex-President Viktor Yanuckovych’s regime,
although at that time activists had little expectation of being allowed
complete it. But after EuroMaidan Revolution and change in the
government in 2014, the law on the transparent use of public funds got
more public attention and support in parliament, and it was finally
passed on Feb. 11 this year.
Apart from pushing
for all of the authorities to release their data, one of the challenges
for Reanimation Package of Reforms now is to create a network of
activists around Ukraine to monitor the newly available information, as
well as to train both the public and local officials to use the system.
Another
initiative of Reanimation Package of Reforms ahead of the local elections on Oct. 25 is to sign
memorandums with candidates running for local councils and mayors. Those
who agree to sign the memorandums with the activists undertake, if they
are elected, to provide mechanisms for direct public participation in
government, to implement anti-corruption and gender equality laws, and
to ensure online visualization of all budget data.
“Samopomich
has been the only party to sign the memorandum at the national level,
while the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko and the Batkivschyna parties said
this should be decided locally,” Tarnay said, adding that some
candidates from these parties had already refused to sign the
memorandum.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Gordiienko can be reached at [email protected].
