Draft Agenda

Background
Conference Goals
Daily Conference Draft Agenda

Background

This was the second conference of the International Budget Project. The conference was held in Cape Town, South Africa from February 21 to 25, 1999 and was funded by the Ford Foundation. The Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) of the United States planned and co-sponsored the conference.

The theme of the conference was "Transparency and Participation in the Budget Process" for two main reasons. First, the challenges faced by civil society in these areas are quite similar around the developing world. Second, unless a country's budgetary process is transparent and allows for civil participation, the ability of NGOs to undertake budget work is severely restricted. Establishing a transparent and participatory budget process is a high priority of the NGOs.

Conference Goals
The goals of the conference include:

• Advancing the development of researchers and organisations involved in applied budget analysis by exposing them to successful and new initiatives, as well as by facilitating discussions with a range of organisations at different levels of capacity. IDASA was featured as a successful initiative in a challenging political environment.

• Advancing understanding and work on issues of transparency and participation in the budget process. "Transparency" issues include the availability of budget information to the public as well as the establishment of decision-making processes that are subject to public scrutiny. "Participation" means both that the budget process allows for the direct and indirect input of researchers and the public, as well as, more broadly, examining how researchers can play a constructive role in the budget process. The "budget process" is used here to include the steps by which budgets are prepared, decided upon, and executed.

• Advancing a wide range of networking activities. These include promoting regional and issue alliances, as well as growing and nurturing the network as a whole.

Daily Conference Agenda