Fiscal Transparency Portals: Lessons from Latin America

Oct 25
Posted by Aura Martinez[1]

Ten Latin-American governments within the Global Initiative on Fiscal Transparency’s (GIFT) Network came together in late 2020 to create the Portals Working Group. This Working Group aims to assist the public in contributing to the development of public policies and monitoring their implementation. The participating countries are: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Uruguay. The Working Group is currently led by the Office of Planning and Budget of the Presidency of the Republic of Uruguay, and GIFT’s Coordination Team.

In January 2021, the Group completed an internal survey of the current status of Fiscal Transparency Portals (FTPs) in the region. In this article, we summarize the results of this survey.

What topics are covered in portals?

FTPs generally cover 12 broad fiscal policy areas: budgets; income and revenue flows; expenditure/budget execution; remuneration/payroll; procurement processes; transfers to subnational governments (SNGs); infrastructure investment and public works; non-financial indicators; financial evaluations; the linkages between budgets and strategic plans; spending of SNGs; and public debt. The results of the survey are summarized in Chart 1 which shows that:

Chart 1. Topics Covered by FTPs

Table 1

How open is the information published?

Information should ideally be presented in machine-readable formats, thus providing significant scope for the reuse and distribution of data by anyone, anytime, anywhere. In this regard, the survey shows that:

What communication channels are used?

Communication channels and data visualizations are key to understanding published information. The survey highlights the following practices:

The survey finds that although there have been efforts to inform, train and interact with audiences such as academia, organized civil society, journalists, legislators, executive agencies, and higher education students, the teams implementing FTPs could benefit from engaging these groups more actively and closely.

Chart 2. Social Networks Directly Linked to FTPs

Chart 2

Interoperability and standardization: Pending agenda

The sustainability of FTPs depends mainly on how they source data to publish information. The surveyed countries are still in the process of implementing or exploring innovations to overcome data sourcing challenges, and to integrate different types and sources of information. For further details see info@fiscaltransparency.net

How do we know if we on the right track?

Governments should establish clear objectives and goals for the publication of fiscal information, and in monitoring the use and impact of FTPs.  According to the survey, this represents one of the biggest challenges for current FTPs:

Conclusion

For the GIFT network, this survey provides key information to guide future collaboration and peer learning efforts. Given that the results reflect the FTP implementers’ own assessment of the current strengths and weaknesses of their portals, improvements are more likely to take place.

The survey demonstrates the significant improvement in the region with regards to the FTPs’ thematic comprehensiveness, format openness, coverage, and collaboration with users. Nonetheless, there is still work to be done to improve the gathering, standardization and publication of data and measuring the impact of FTPs on fiscal policies.

For the GIFT network, these lessons form the basis of an agenda of activities that will focus its peer learning and collaboration efforts on:

 

[1]  Coordinator for Knowledge and Technical Assistance and Collaboration, Global initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT).

Note: The posts on the IMF PFM Blog should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy.

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