Preparing Citizens Budgets

Webinar: March 13, 2019IBudget Preparation and Execution

Citizens Budget stands out as the only document developed by government exclusively for public. Using non-technical language, it enables citizens to understand how government is raising and spending budget resources. In addition, it represents important precondition for ensuring fiscal transparency and enabling public participation in budgeting processes. To make the most of a Citizens Budget, it should be simple, less technical version of a government’s budget that is produced timely and incorporate information that is relevant for the general public. Even though Citizens Budgets can vary widely in content and length, and be presented in a number of ways, ranging from a simple brochure to a comprehensive report, they should be widely and easily accessible by different users.

What you learned?

After the latest crisis governments have been increasingly rethinking the way they communicate to public and how they involve it in the budgetary decision-making. Citizens Budgets are progressively becoming a tool that provides citizens with an insight into government’s policy priorities and budget allocations. In addition, Citizens Budgets are being used as one of the key elements in evaluation of overall governments’ fiscal transparency.

Having this in mind, this webinar provided the tips for conceptualizing, preparing and disseminating of Citizens Budgets, and demonstrated country examples and achievements in its utilization.

This webinar aimed at helping finance officials involved in preparation of Citizens Budgets to understand its specifics and explore options for achieving desired level of fiscal transparency, while providing tips for its conceptualization and dissemination. Additionally, this webinar discussed prospects for realizing Citizens Budgets’ benefits for public participation in budgetary decision-making, e.g. through its utilization by non-governmental organizations.

Who attended?

This webinar was designed for officials from ministries of finance and other government institutions involved in preparation of Citizens Budgets in their respective country. Furthermore, the webinar was for officials from other public institutions, individuals from academia, non-governmental organizations and media with a general interest in public participation and fiscal transparency.

This webinar was publicly available, and there were no limits to the number of participants per country or institution.