Online Openness and Transparency of Local Budgets in Belarus

Abstract

World experience shows that public participation in the budget process and openness in the public sector are the necessary conditions for a proper economic strategy of the State. Financial openness contributes to the efficient collection and distribution of public resources. It expands the responsibility of governments, strengthens the trust of citizens and prevents opportunities for corruption. Researchers around the world (Alt, Lassen, Skilling, Bernick, Gandía, Yannacopoulos, Darbyshire, Slukhai and others) and international organisations such as the International Monetary Fund, OECD, the World Bank, the International Budget Partnership (IBP), the Global Initiative for Financial Transparency and the Open Government Partnership have shown growing interest in financial openness issues in recent years. This paper attempts to develop and test a methodology for the operational analysis of online information openness and transparency of the budget process at the local level. The developed methodology used two criteria: (1) the level of transparency of the local budget and (2) an assessment of authority's efforts in ensuring transparency of local budgets. It is based on expert assessments of the informational significance of particular elements of websites of local authorities in issues of local finance and budget. We interpret the resulting assessment of the information content of the site with the local budget and finances data as the online openness and transparency of local budgets Online Local Budget Index of Transparency (OLBIT).