Transformative Fiscal Transparency (ZA0025)

What is the public problem that the commitment will address? South Africa continues to champion fiscal transparency, but fundamental issues persist with connecting transparency to meaningful public participation that has the potential to be transformative. The link between transparency and accountability is weak, particularly at the subnational level. The links between transparency and accessibility/ use/ inclusion also continues to be weak.

What is the commitment? Fiscal transparency that is transformative and inclusive of traditionally marginalised groups and communities across South Africa.

How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem? Transparency for greater engagement, accountability and effective proactive management of public finances in a manner that ensures better access to relevant information by marginalized groups and thus better enabling them to hold government to account.

Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values? This commitment will enhance open government and enable better civic participation especially by marginalised groups.

Action Plan Review

2:  Transformative Fiscal Transparency

• Verifiable: No                                                    

• Does it have an open government lens? Yes

• Potential for results: Unclear     

• Clustered: No

Results Report

Commitment 2. Transformative Fiscal Transparency

● Verifiable: No

● Does it have an open government lens? Yes

● Potential for results: Unclear

● Completion: Not started

● Did it open government? No early results to report yet

This commitment, as phrased, has an open governance lens. However, there were no key milestones with which to gauge the level of completion.

In general, the National Treasury and civil society partners continued efforts to enhance fiscal transparency, with activities that followed from previous commitments. During the action plan cycle, The National Treasury and Imali Yethu, a civil society coalition, continued to maintain Vulekamali and Municipal Money, both publicly-open portals for national, provincial, and local government data. ^[7] The budgetary information in both portals was published in an easy-to-access and user-friendly manner that allows civic actors and residents to track the use of public funds by cities and municipalities. ^[8] Additionally, South Africa continued to develop the second phase of the Vulekamali portal to include procurement and performance data. ^[9]

There is no evidence that marginalised communities at the local level accessed information contained in these public portals. However, it can be confirmed that the website contained current financial information which was relevant to the current action plan cycle. The commitment’s goal was to give marginalized communities access to fiscal data to enhance community participation and accountability. The IRM was not able to verify whether the data made available via these public portals helped achieve these goals.