Which countries open their budget books? Open Budget Index
[2006 November 6]

The past two decades have seen growing interest in promoting public access to government budget information. Access to information on government budgets and financial activities is essential to ensuring that governments are accountable to their citizens. Timely access to such information enables citizens to participate in, and understand, policy decisions that have profound impacts on their daily lives.

For the past two years, the International Budget Project (IBP) has been working with civil society and academic partners in 59 countries, to develop a survey instrument to collect comparative information to implement the survey and analyse its results.

The survey is called the Open Budget Index.  This is the first index to rate countries on how open their budget books are to their citizens. It is intended to provide citizens, legislators, and civil society advocates with the comprehensive and practical information needed to gauge a government's commitment to budget transparency and accountability. Armed with this kind of information, lenders, development advocates, and aid organizations can identify meaningful budget reforms needed in specific countries to combat corruption and strengthen basic services to improve people's lives.

The International Budget Project website hosts the results of this study, where you can find Key Findings, Country Summaries and Questionnaires (here for the South Africa country summary).
A brief one page overview of the results is also available.

 

Some of the key documents are also available for download below.  For full details including methodology and FAQ, as well as case studies of how budget transparency can improve people’s lives, see the comprehensive project website at www.openbudgetindex.org

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

 

DownloadsSummary of Countries' Performance - Open Budget Index
Brief Summary of Overall Performance Open Budget Index.pdf

Key Findings of Open Budget Index
Key Findings Open Budget Index.pdf

South African Country Summary
Country Summary SA.pdf