Open Budgets India’s workshop with Assam’s Finance Department

Open Budgets India’s workshop with Assam’s Finance Department

Open Budgets India (OBI) recently conducted a capacity building workshop on the notion and use of open budget data for the Finance Department of Assam at Guwahati. It was organised in collaboration with the Assam Society for Comprehensive Financial Management System (AS-CFMS) as part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) and AS-CFMS. The workshop was centered around the idea of open budgets and how it can be used by Assam to enhance transparency in governance, both within the government departments as well as in engaging with the citizens.

The 2-day workshop was attended by more than 40 participants from a number of different departments spanning across Budget, Revenue, Taxation, E-Governance, Education as well as members of the society. The topics covered over the two days were:

• Key Definitions and Opportunities of Open Budgets & Fiscal Data
• Introduction to National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) and its application in Assam’s budget.
• Introduction to Sectoral Budgets with special focus on Education Budge
• An overview of the State-level Integrated Financial Management System and District Treasury
• Open-source Tools and Techniques for analyzing and visualizing Sectoral Budgets
• An Overview of Outcome Budgets with experiences from India and other countries
• Breakout sessions to explore ideas around Participatory Budgeting and Citizen Budgets. The focus of the workshop was to make it an interactive experience instead of just having formal presentations

The slides for the sessions can be found here.

Some of the issues discussed in the course of the 2 days of the workshop are:

What are open budgets?

This central theme ran through most of our sessions with the intention of familiarizing the participants with different tenets of open budgets and the huge potential it has for enhancing transparency in governance. The discussions went on to map the potential benefits which can accrue by adopting such an open system of functioning as well as to bring forth the existing policy regime (National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy) on this for India. Some of the questions which resonated through these sessions were:

• How can the Assam Finance Department use the concept of open budgets in their work?
• How have other states been using open data in governance?
• How can metadata help in making budgets searchable and what should be its various components?

What do we understand by sectoral budgets?

One of the areas of focus for the departments in Assam has been to bring out citizens’ friendly versions of sectoral budgets and OBI will be involved in creating digital versions of these sectoral budgets in the coming months. As part of this engagement, we had devoted a part of our workshop for understanding financing for Education as a crucial aspect of social sector budgeting.The crucial issues explored were:

• Demonstrating a prototype of Assam’s Education Department budget through a dashboard.
• How is financing for Education as a sector different from tracking allocations for the Education Department in Assam?
• What are the different sources of funding for Education?
• What are the best practices in organizing and presenting Education Budgets among different states?

How are we trying to integrate District Treasury data?

Moving slightly away from budget documents, the session on Public Financial Management System (PFMS) discussed the background of the latter, the efforts needed towards developing an Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) and the fund flow mechanism through different tiers of the government. Certain better practices of states like Jharkhand, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, etc. were highlighted in terms of making treasury data available in public domain.Participants were also encouraged to explore a few prototypes built on treasury data from Andhra Pradesh and Odisha and raise their queries.

How can Assam build Outcome Budgets?

Publishing a comprehensive and meaningful Outcome Budget came out to be a clear priority for Assam in this workshop. Assam undertook the exercise of publishing outcome budgets by linking it with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)for the first time in 2017–18. The exercise, however, had remained confined to being merely a technical one, as was discussed by the participants and the need to undertake a more rigorous approach towards it was strongly felt. To complement their efforts, OBI attempted to present different examples of outcome/performance budgets from in and outside the country which can be used as references in Assam’s journey. A few key observations of this session were:

• Shifting the focus from Outcome based budgeting to Outcome oriented budgeting
• Developing short and medium term indicators with measurable benchmarks
• Involvement of line/implementing departments in preparing outcome budgets for specific sectors

What can be the steps towards making Assam’s budget more participatory and citizen friendly?

This session explored different practices of participatory budgeting through a breakout session.The entire room was divided into four groups, each of whom had a lively interaction to capture different ideas in which budgetary processes can be made more participatory. At the end of the session each group was encouraged to present their ideas to all. Some of the innovative ideas which came out of this exercise were asking citizen feedback proactively, involving academics and civil society organisations working on specific sectoral issues, efforts in making budgets more reader friendly and simple to understand, etc.

What came through in this workshop was the active participation of the different departments of Assam and the visible willingness to have a practical experience in using open source tools and techniques to refine their work. We came back with several queries and requests to cover much more in later workshops to carry forward this collaboration. This workshop would not have been possible without the enthusiasm and support from the Assam Society for Comprehensive Financial Management System and we would like to extend a big note of thanks to all those involved.