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Budget transparency innovation in the Czech local government. Lucie Sedmihradská Department of Public Finance University of Economics, Prague sedmih@vse.cz. Scope.
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Budget transparency innovation in the Czech local government Lucie Sedmihradská Department of Public Finance University of Economics, Prague sedmih@vse.cz
Scope • Acase study of a specific ICT driven innovation for voluntary budget information disclosure which gained extreme popularity in the Czech Republic over the past nine years – budget explorers, literarily "click-through budgets". • Budget explorers are various software platforms presenting public budgets and their execution in a user-friendly manner enabling subsequent disaggregation of revenue and expenditure up to the lowest budget lines and sometime resourceful visualizations of the data.
Objective of the paper • explore and evaluate diffusion forces and the real impact of a budget transparency innovation
Methodology • Survey of usage and characteristics of the budget explorers in 72 Czech district towns • Comparison of the results with the nation wide budget explorer Monitor and features of obligatory published budget documents • Collection of media news provided by the media database ANOPRESS IT and on the Internet • Time line of budget explorer launch • Corpora of contemporary written Czech Syn • Key words identification in 6 relevant articles published in professional journal Modrní obec • Frequency of usage of the expression „click through budget“
Occurrence of the term “click through budget” in the corpora
Expectations • “Citizens can, using their own eyes, get sure about economic and correct management” (Kratochvílová, 2014, 8). • It is expected that citizens will in high numbers use the tool and that using it, they can get sure that the management is correct. • The key characteristics are: • clear, transparent and public, • individual and specific, • electronic and web based. • Budget explorers allow to track, control, describe or explain.
Reasons behind the fast diffusion • frequent promise of more transparent public management by politicians, • active encouragement by several transparency competitions and evaluations and • varied supply of the SW providers.
Otevřeno x zavřeno • Zlatý erb • Hodnocení krajů • Přívětivý úřad-MVČR • Defines new standard • Offers easy solution min. 8 suppliers 2-3 thousands eur • Promises higher transparency
Conclusions: Czech experience with budget explorers • They played crucial role in the budget transparency development and debate in the last 7 years. • It is a viable form of presentation and provision of government budget data. • They suit the needs of politicians and hence are being implemented unlike other transparency enhancing measures • New standard of transparency • Source of public attention • Do not (cannot) help to evaluate governments performace • Narrowed the transparency discussion