Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 31st NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview WG5: Public Finance and Public Financial Management Author(s) Irena Klemenčić University of Zagreb Zagreb Croatia Durman Petra, Rogic Lugaric Tereza, Musa Anamarija, Title OPEN BUDGETS: OPEN DATA AS A TOOL FOR FISCAL AND TAX TRANSPARENCY File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract Today, the principles of government transparency, openness and responsiveness in relation to public are inevitable components of good governance in general. In area of public finance they are particularly emphasized because citizens’ informing and familiarization with government revenues and expenditures represents basic mechanism for holding public authorities accountable in relation to public, but is also related to the protection of human rights taxpayer protection and possibilities for public participation. Fiscal transparency has intensely been advocated by international organizations, such as International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, United Nations, and other, particularly within the initiatives such as Open Government Partnership (OGP) and other anti-corruption programs. In area of public finance, transparency occurs in two main forms – the budget (fiscal) transparency and the tax transparency. Budget transparency is related to expenditure side, while tax transparency refers to the revenue side of public finance system. Informing citizens about government spending represents a mechanism of holding government accountable for its actions, which means it is an instrument for performing public oversight. It also ensures less opportunities for corruptive and other unethical behaviour and has potential to strenghten legitimacy and public trust in political institutions. Terms of budget (fiscal) transparency and openness are often used as synonyms. Although interrelated, they refer to different processes in relation between government and the public. The principle of transparency is related to the visibility and availability of different types of government information to the public, i.e. it connotes a one-way process of communication from government to the public. The principle of openness includes the principle of transparency, but goes even further – citizens’ access to information is a prerequisite for opportunity to provide a feedback information. When referring to budgetary process, e-consultations and participatory budgeting are among most commonly used instruments. Open budget data embraces only government information, that is, data on budgetary process available in open formats and appropriate for re-use on behalf of interested public (users). The main research question of the paper refers to the level of availability and quality of open budget data at local level of government in Croatia, and factors affecting the level of openness and the quality of data. In order to conduct our analysis, we rely on content analysis of budget data published by Croatian local units (cities and municipalities), with aim to analyze formats in which budget data are published, available datasets and content of budget data. Our preliminary analysis has shown that (i) legal requirements for open budget data are in place, but focused on quantitative rather than qualitative aspects of budget data; (ii) significant differences in the format of open budget data can be found between cities; and (iii) certain specificities of open data in area of public finances can be detected in relation to other categories of open data, referring to the content of open budget data and in relation to citizens’ interest and familiarization with public budget.
