Citizen Budgets (RO0050)
Overview
At-a-Glance
Action Plan: Romania Action Plan 2018-2020
Action Plan Cycle: 2018
Status: Active
Institutions
Lead Institution: Ministry of Public Finance (MFP), Office for Public Information, Public Relations and Transparency
Support Institution(s): Ministry for Regional Development and Public Administration (MDRAP), Centre for Public Innovation Funky Citizens
Policy Areas
Capacity Building, Fiscal Openness, Legislation & Regulation, Legislative, Publication of Budget/Fiscal InformationDescription
Citizens Budgets
2018 - 2019 Lead implementing agency/actor Ministry of Public Finance (MFP), Office for Public Information, Public Relations and Transparency Other actors involved State actors Ministry for Regional Development and Public Administration (MDRAP) CSOs, private sector, multilaterals Centre for Public Innovation Funky Citizens What is the public problem that the commitment will address? The draft budget is publicly presented for debate, but the format of the document is very difficult to understand for the general public, even for citizens with a high level of education that are not experts in the field. Commitment description What is the commitment? The commitment aims to gradually introduce, for the central and local government, the mandatory budgets for citizens, a narrative form of public budgets. How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem? Effective management of public resources Improving public services Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values? Introducing Citizens' Budgets as an information tool in the process of adopting public budgets Milestone activity with a verifiable deliverable Responsible agency / partner Start Date: End Date: Preparing a Budget for Citizens from the state budget for the year 2019 and presenting it during the consultation period MFP September 2018 December 2018 Making and presenting the BPC for the 2019 budget MFP December 2018 February 2019 Drafting and adopting rules that introduce BpC's obligation for all public authorities MFP / MDRAP TBD TBD Preparing, initiating and implementing a support program regarding the use of BpC for public authorities MFP / MDRAP TBD TBD
IRM Midterm Status Summary
3. Citizens Budgets
Commitment Text: "The commitment aims to gradually introduce, for the central and local government, the mandatory budgets for citizens, a narrative form of public budgets."
Milestones:
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- Preparing a Budget for Citizens from the state budget for the year 2019 and presenting it during the consultation period
- Making and presenting the Citizens’ Budget for the 2019 budget
- Drafting and adopting rules that introduce the Citizens’ Budget obligation for all public authorities
- Preparing, initiating and implementing a support program regarding the use of the Citizens’ Budget for public authorities
Start Date: September 2018 ...............................................
End Date: To be determined
Editorial Note: The commitment text is abridged. The full text can be found in the OGP 2018-2020 national action plan.
Context and Objectives
The International Budget Partnership’s (IBP)’s 2017 Open Budget Survey revealed that Romania scored highly on fiscal transparency, yet poorly on citizen engagement. For instance, Romania published all the essential budgetary documents except the Citizens’ Budget [25]—a less technical version of the proposed or approved budget created to give the broad public essential information. Few citizens comment on the published draft state budget, although they are legally permitted to do so, [26] which according to a civil society representative is because they do not have any infographics or narrative to help them understand the proposed expenditures or the choices to be made for the budget. [27] In 2017, a visualization was compiled for the 2018 approved state budget, based on the data published by the Ministry of Public Finances (MFP), by a Romanian NGO—Open Budget [28]—which also created an interactive application to visualize and modify the 2018 and 2019 [29] approved state budgets. Their user-friendly explanation constitutes a possible form of a Citizens’ Budget.
With this commitment, MFP will further give access to budgetary information by publishing on its website [30] another user-friendly explanation of the 2019 approved and rectified state budget in the autumn of 2019. This will resemble the 2018 Citizens’ Budget brochure that the MFP published, [31] following IBP’s best practice model. [32] More importantly, MFP will prepare and submit for public consultation a Citizens’ Budget for the 2019 draft state budget, thereby furthering citizen participation.
There are some early signals that implementation of this commitment will have challenges. According to the MFP representative, despite Milestone 3.3, MFP does not have the instruments or the resources to oblige other institutions of the public administrations to present their budgets in a user-friendly way. [33] An interviewed Ministry for Regional Development and Public Administration (MDRAP) representative stated that MDRAP’s role is to support the MFP’s initiatives to build the Citizens’ Budgets for public administration. [34] It remains unclear which rules are required, who will design them, and whether this milestone will be continued in the absence of direct intervention from the government. Thus, it remains unclear who will take responsibility for this milestone and in which form.
Nevertheless, if MFP and MDRAP could (as written in the commitment) collaborate and produce explanatory brochures at the level of public administration and support efforts of the public administration to showcase their prospective and realized budgetary decisions via user-friendly infographics, this commitment could improve budgetary participation in Romania. According to a civil society representative, citizens’ budgets are particularly relevant for participatory budgeting, as they give citizens a better understanding of how the decisions to spend the state budget were made. [35] Nevertheless, it is important to note that Citizens’ Budget brochures that are published after the budget has been approved and rectified do not further budgetary participation (though they do offer additional information on the budgetary choices that have been made).
Next steps
This commitment addresses an important policy area, considering the limited citizen engagement in budgetary decisions in Romania. The following recommendations can help guide its implementation as well as its possible continuation in the next action plan:
Publish more explanatory brochures for the 2020 budget.
- The MFP has not been able to publish an explanatory brochure for citizens next to the draft state budget of 2019. [36] Although this opportunity was missed in 2019, an explanatory brochure could still encourage budgetary participation if it would accompany the 2020 draft budget, ideally at the end of the 2019 calendar year.
- More importantly, MFP could publish an explanatory brochure to accompany the adopted budget at the beginning of the 2020 calendar year, and another to accompany the revised budget in the second half of the 2020 calendar year.
Have more conversations on the topic of budgetary participation.
- Civil society has been critical towards the current budgetary participation practices and originally proposed this commitment. MFP could actively involve them in improving the practice of budgetary participation by:
- organizing a series of discussions or working groups on the explanatory brochures and analyze the 2018 and 2019 published brochures (e.g., assess their usefulness, ways to improve their content, narrative, and/or design; assess their visibility and find ways to promote them among the wider public);
- organizing a series of discussions or working groups on the practice of budgetary participation to find the best practices and see under which circumstances they could be implemented.
- MFP could raise public awareness of the concept of budgetary participation and the role and responsibility of the citizen. This can be done via trainings—e.g., school lectures, university seminars, online masterclasses, brochures, etc. Civil society could be involved as facilitators or content creators. [37]
Pilot budgetary participation on smaller samples.
The government could set up an inter-ministerial working group (with experts from MFP and MDRAP) to:
- Identify the (local) public administrations that would be interested in the topic of and implementation of budgetary participation and select the most suitable administrations. For example, the survey MDRAP conducted among local public administrations (see Commitment 2) revealed that budgetary participation was desired by many local public administrations.
- Design a protocol for budgetary participation for the institutions piloting it,
- Secure the technical and financial support for piloting budgetary participation at the level of these administrations,
- Evaluate the pilot and disseminate the knowledge.
[25] Open Budget Survey 2017 Romania, IBP, available at https://bit.ly/1hHEpcL.
[26]Interview with Bogdan Grunevici, Ministry of Public Finances (MFP), 19 September 2019.
[27] Interview with Ovidiu Voicu, Center for Public Innovation (CPI), 16 April 2019.
[28] Funky Citizens (2018) "Romania Open Budget Survey 2017: summary", available [in Romanian] at https://bit.ly/2ZMl0xJ.
[29] Open Budget 2019 application, available [in Romanian] at https://bit.ly/31JSDlj.
[30] "State budget", Ministry of Public Finances, available [in Romanian] at http://bit.ly/2kJEIeE.
[31] Ministerul Finantelor Publice (2018) "Bugetul pentru Cetateni", available [in Romanian] at http://bit.ly/2mpVsb9.
[32]Interview with Bogdan Grunevici, MFP, 19 September 2019.
[33]Interview with Bogdan Grunevici, MFP, 19 September 2019.
[34] Interview with Andreea Grigore, Ministry of Regional Development and Public Administration (MDRAP), 4 September 2019.
[35] Interview with Ovidiu Voicu, CPI, 16 April 2019.
[36]Interview with Bogdan Grunevici, MFP, 19 September 2019.
[37] An interesting exercise in Budgetary Participation is proposed by CPI. See "Bugetare Participativa la Scoala", Centrul pentru Inovare Publica, available [in Romanian] at http://bit.ly/2kX9wZl.
Commitments
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Standardize Public Consultation Practices
RO0048, 2018, E-Government
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Open Local Government
RO0049, 2018, Capacity Building
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Citizen Budgets
RO0050, 2018, Capacity Building
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Youth Participation
RO0051, 2018, Capacity Building
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Register of Civil Society Proposals
RO0052, 2018, E-Government
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Access to Information – Local
RO0053, 2018, Capacity Building
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Online Business Sector Information
RO0054, 2018, Capacity Building
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Digital Consular Services
RO0055, 2018, Capacity Building
-
Transparency in the Funding of Political Parties
RO0056, 2018, Access to Information
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National Investment Fund Transparency
RO0057, 2018, Access to Information
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Civil Servant Training
RO0058, 2018, Capacity Building
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Raise Awareness About Corruption
RO0059, 2018, Capacity Building
-
Transparency of Seized Assets
RO0060, 2018, Access to Information
-
Access to Social Services
RO0061, 2018, E-Government
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Open Access to Research
RO0062, 2018, Access to Information
-
Open Education
RO0063, 2018, Access to Information
-
Evaluate Open Data
RO0064, 2018, Access to Information
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Open Data
RO0065, 2018, Access to Information
-
Improving the Legal Framework and Practices Regarding Access to Public Interest Information
RO0030, 2016, Access to Information
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Centralized Publishing of Public Interest Information on the Single Gateway Transparenta.Gov.Ro
RO0031, 2016, Capacity Building
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Promoting Open Parliament Principles
RO0032, 2016, Capacity Building
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Improved Management of the Applications Submitted for Granting Citizenship
RO0033, 2016, Capacity Building
-
Standardization of Transparency Practices in the Decision-Making Procedures
RO0034, 2016, Capacity Building
-
Centralised Publication of Legislative Projects on the Single Gateway Consultare.Gov.Ro
RO0035, 2016, Capacity Building
-
Citizens Budgets
RO0036, 2016, Capacity Building
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Improve Youth Consultation and Public Participation
RO0037, 2016, Capacity Building
-
Subnational Open Government
RO0038, 2016, Capacity Building
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Promoting Transparency in the Decision-Making Process By Setting Up a Transparency Register (RUTI)
RO0039, 2016, Anti-Corruption
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Access to Performance Indicators Monitored in the Implementation of the National Anticorruption Strategy (SNA)
RO0040, 2016, Access to Information
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Improve Transparency in the Management of Seized Assets
RO0041, 2016, Access to Information
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Annual Mandatory Training of Civil Servants on Integrity Matters
RO0042, 2016, Anti-Corruption
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Improving Access to Cultural Heritage
RO0043, 2016, Capacity Building
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Open Data and Transparency in Education
RO0044, 2016, Access to Information
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Virtual School Library and Open Educational Resources
RO0045, 2016, Capacity Building
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Open Contracting
RO0046, 2016, Anti-Corruption
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Increasing the Quality and Quantity of Published Open Data
RO0047, 2016, Access to Information
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Publishing the Public Interest Information on a Single Government Portal: Transparenta.Gov.Ro
RO0019, 2014, Access to Information
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Making an Inventory of the Datasets Produced by the Ministries and Subordinate Agencies
RO0020, 2014, Access to Information
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Ensuring the Free Online Access to National Legislation
RO0021, 2014, E-Government
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Amending Law 109/2007 on the Re-Use of Public Sector Information
RO0022, 2014, Access to Information
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Opening Data Collected from the National Health System
RO0023, 2014, Access to Information
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Opening Data Collected from the Monitoring of Preventive Measures as Part of the National Anticorruption Strategy 2012-2015
RO0024, 2014, Access to Information
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Open Contracting
RO0025, 2014, Anti-Corruption
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Opening up Data Resulted from Publicly-Funded Research Projects
RO0026, 2014, E-Government
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Increasing the Quality and Quantity of Published Open Data
RO0027, 2014, Access to Information
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Human Resource Training in the Field of Open Data
RO0028, 2014, Access to Information
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Disseminating Information on the OGP Principles and Promoting the Open Data Concept in an Accessible Manner
RO0029, 2014,
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Designating a Person Responsible for Publishing Open Data in Each Public Institution
RO0001, 2012, Access to Information
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Identifying Regulatory Needs, Logistical and Technical Solutions
RO0002, 2012, Access to Information
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Making an Inventory of Available (High-Value) Data-Sets
RO0003, 2012, Access to Information
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Priority Publishing on the Web Pages of Public Institutions of Specific Data-Sets
RO0004, 2012, Access to Information
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Initiating Pilot-Projects, in Partnerships
RO0005, 2012, Access to Information
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Organizing Public Debates on the Utility of Open Data, in Partnerships
RO0006, 2012, Access to Information
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Uniform, Machine-Readable Publishing Format for Open Data
RO0007, 2012, Access to Information
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Procedures for Publication of Data-Sets Based on Civil Society Recommendations
RO0008, 2012, Access to Information
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Procedures for Citizen Complaints Pertaining to Open Data
RO0009, 2012, Access to Information
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Consultation Mechanism Between Suppliers and Beneficiaries of Open Data
RO0010, 2012, Access to Information
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Creating a Rating System for the Assessment of High-Value Data-Sets
RO0011, 2012, Access to Information
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Routinely Publishing Specific Data-Sets on Web Pages of Public Institutions
RO0012, 2012, Access to Information
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Integrating Open Data from Public Institutions in a Single National Platform
RO0013, 2012, Access to Information
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Inventories of Data, in Order to Facilitate Public Access
RO0014, 2012, Access to Information
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Institute a Monitoring Mechanism of Compliance for Open Data
RO0015, 2012, Access to Information
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Stimulating the Market for Innovative Use of Open Data
RO0016, 2012, Access to Information
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Routinely Publishing Data-Sets on the National Platform, 25% High-Value
RO0017, 2012, Access to Information
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The Public Procurement Electronic System (SEAP). the Electronic Allocation System for Transports (SAET)/B.1 C) Expanding the On-Line Submission of Fiscal Forms. Ensuring the Free On-Line Access to National Legislation. Developing Electronic Tools to Manage Subpoenas and Facilitate Access Toinformation Regarding Legal Proceedings. Developing Electronic Tools to Manage the Procedures Related to Obtaining the Romanian Citizenship. Developing Electronic Tools to Manage the Procedures Related to the Creation of Non-Profit Legal Persons. the Integrated System for Electronic Access to Justice (SIIAEJ)
RO0018, 2012, Access to Justice