Ouverture des budgets publics

Governments collect and spend billions in public funds to pay for goods and services like education, healthcare, and infrastructure. As a result, the public has the right to know how their taxpayer money is spent. When information about public budgets is transparent, easy to understand, and used to involve members of the public in policy-making, it helps reconstruire la confiance between governments and the people they serve. This is especially important at the niveau local, where engaging communities in fiscal decisions that directly affect their daily lives can have a considerable impact. For example, countries with robust fiscal transparency measures can see trust levels améliorer de 10 à 20 pour cent.

Fiscal openness also has other clear benefits: research shows that policies like open budgets and participatory budgeting can conduire to lower deficits and borrowing costs, more targeted budgets, and increased efficiency, revenue, and levels of tax compliance. These reforms can also conduire à better governance and development outcomes, such as reduced corruption and lower infant mortality rates.

Since the launch of OGP in 2011, member countries have made significant progress in applying the principles of transparency, participation, and public accountability to open up the budgeting process to the people they serve.

15 ans de progrès

Over the past 15 years, OGP countries have demonstrated a marked improvement in advancing fiscal openness.

For example, 80 percent of OGP countries publish the Executive’s Budget Proposal and Audit Report—two essential documents for open budgets—in a timely manner. Most OGP countries (58 percent) now publish enough information to support informed public debate on the budget, compared to fewer than a third of OGP countries (31 percent) in 2012.

OGP members have also made strides in improving public engagement: nearly all OGP countries (98 percent) have at least one channel for formal public engagement in the budget process, while more than half (56 percent) have channels for engagement across three branches of government. There is also a visible difference between OGP countries and non-OGP countries when it comes to public engagement in the budget process: OGP countries outperform non-OGP countries, more than doubling their OBS participation score.

All countries advancing fiscal openness through OGP have achieved concrete results during their action plans, such as newly disclosed data, new legislation mandating greater openness, and greater involvement of CSOs.

• Législation: 26 OGP countries (nearly half of countries advancing fiscal openness through OGP) have passed legislation or regulation, successfully institutionalizing fiscal open practices.
• Citizen budgets: 28 OGP countries (about half of countries advancing fiscal openness) have made budgetary information more accessible to the general public, such as through Citizen Budget documents and interactive data visualizations.
• Public participation in policy-making: More than 40 OGP countries have involved the public while implementing fiscal reforms. Participation has taken the form of consultations, collaborative policy-making, and the use of fiscal data to promote accountability. Additionally, in 20 countries, there is evidence that civil society directly shaped the results of the commitment, such as new fiscal policies and practices, as well as participatory budgets.

The OGP platform has played a key role in driving these results. For example, OGP has helped countries institutionalize fiscal openness reforms that began as ad hoc initiatives or pilot projects. The Philippines scaled up the Seal of Good Local Governance and Citizen Participatory Audit initiatives, shifting them from pilots into core programs. In Croatia, the government used its OGP action plans and feedback from the Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) to move from ad hoc transparency to a standardized, long-running local budget data and visualization system that now better aligns local policies with public interests.

OGP has also provided a space for peer learning and the benchmarking of progress against global standards. For example, the Philippines is recognized as a model for localizing fiscal openness, inspiring other members’ participatory audits and subnational budget openness efforts. Finland’s state spending portal drew inspiration from Ukraine’s Prozorro contrat ouvert reforms. Croatia, Scotland, and North Macedonia have all featured in OGP and GIFT analyses of standout fiscal transparency commitments, benefiting from peer recognition and technical guidance.

As a result of these efforts, the Partnership has played a significant role in supporting fiscal openness worldwide. Many of the reforms below made tangible improvements to public accountability, such as improved channels for citizens to hold government officials accountable and improved mechanisms for independent fiscal oversight. Additionally, in the case of the Philippines (see more below), reforms have also achieved tangible economic impacts in terms of increased government resource mobilization.

Regard vers l'avenir

As OGP members look ahead to the future of fiscal openness reforms, the challenge is to move beyond publishing budget numbers to ensure that public spending is actively shaped, monitored, and evaluated by the people it serves. The next phase of fiscal openness will depend on making financial data accessible and user-friendly and linking financial policies to community needs and outcomes through participatory processes. This means institutionalizing transparency and public participation, especially from historically underrepresented groups, throughout the entire budget cycle. Yet transparency and participation alone are not the end goal. Rather, they are the foundation for ensuring that tax money translates directly into better healthcare, education, and infrastructure, while safeguarding against corruption and unmanageable dette publique.

OGP members are already stepping up to this challenge to show what the next generation of fiscal reform can look like in practice. For instance, OGP reconnu Uasin Gishu County (Kenya)’s ambitious réforme to increase fiscal transparency and participatory budgeting. Recognizing that community members often lack timely access to budget documents, the county launched a digital Open Budget Portal and modernized its revenue collection systems. But the county government did not stop at disclosure. By implementing the County Budget and Economic Forum and decentralizing public forums, Uasin Gishu is actively equipping civil society with the fiscal literacy needed to meaningfully shape budget allocations and track service delivery in real time.

Improving how governments track financement climatique will also be crucial over the next 15 years, especially as countries mobilize the resources needed for a just transition and the Paris Agreement goals. At the national level, the Philippines is demonstrating how fiscal openness can help address pressing global crises. The government is taking innovative steps to increase the accessibilité, of climate finance data, which won the 2025 Open Gov Challenge Award. By developing policy proposals that institutionalize citizen participation in climate funding, the Philippines is ensuring that the resources allocated for environmental resilience are spent efficiently, equitably, and driven by the voices of the communities most vulnerable to climate change.

Several interconnected issues will require more attention in the years ahead. As governments manage serious fiscal issues from climate adaptation to economic recovery, debt transparency will be critical to long-term economic health. Without public oversight of national borrowing, governments risque reaching unsustainable debt levels that limit their ability to fund essential services. It will also be necessary to link different types of data, such as contrat ouvert et beneficial ownership, to debt transparency information. Connecting different datasets can give the public and authorities a more holistic view of public finances, enabling stronger oversight and accountability.

As OGP charts its course for the future, it commits to supporting coalitions of reformers who are pushing the boundaries of what open budgets can achieve. By connecting members to peer learning, technical expertise, and global standards, OGP will continue to show why fiscal openness is not just an accounting exercise, but a fundamental tool for building trust and delivering real, tangible results for all.