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Our Money, Our Responsibility
A Citizens’ Guide to Monitoring Government Expenditures
Guide to Budget Work, October 2001 - Part 1, International Budget Project Foreword: A Mother's Tale
In September 1996, Susheela Devi, a woman from rural India, attended a convention on the right to information jointly organized by the National Campaign on Peoples’ Right to Information and two important Indian media institutes. Present as well was V.P. Singh, a former prime minister of India, and many other well-known personalities.
The organizers invited Susheela to speak as the representative of a grassroots farmers’ and laborers’ organization. In the months prior, the group had organized a massive campaign to demand that citizens be given the right to information – including information that would reveal whether local public works programs were fraught with corruption.
During the convention, a reporter from a national daily newspaper asked Susheela why she and her organization were so vehement that citizens should have access to such information. Susheela, a mother of three with little formal education, replied, “When I send my child to the market with 10 rupees to buy something, I demand an account of the money I have given him when he returns home. Similarly, when the government spends my money, I have the right to ask for an accounting of these expenditures.”1
Led by this simple logic of accountability, Susheela and thousands like her from all over India participated in a decade-long struggle that eventually culminated in the enactment of a law giving citizens the right to information. Groups are now using the rights enshrined in this law to obtain government records, pioneering methods by which an involved citizenry can monitor and audit public records.
1 Interview notes with Aruna Roy – a member of MKSS who was present at the event (April 21, 2007).
Acknowledgements
Our Money, Our Responsibility: A Citizens’ Guide to Monitoring Government Expenditures is the third publication in a series developed by the International Budget Project (IBP). It follows A Guide to Budget Work for NGOs (published in 2001) and A Guide to Tax Work for NGOs (published in 2006). This Guide complements the previous two Guides by focusing on the budget implementation process, especially on civil society efforts to monitor and influence the quality of government expenditures.
The Guide was 18 months in the making and was edited by Vivek Ramkumar, an IBP staff member who specializes in participatory auditing initiatives and grassroots expenditure monitoring work. Even as this Guide was being produced, Vivek was testing the methodologies discussed in this Guide and providing technical assistance to groundbreaking groups in East Africa that are monitoring government budget implementation. Vivek’s work – and those of our colleagues around the world – makes us confident that the tools and techniques detailed in this Guide can be applied in a variety of country contexts around the world.
Vivek received invaluable support from IBP’s senior budget analyst, Albert van Zyl, in conceptualizing the Guide and composing the chapters describing budget processes. Albert also reviewed the initial draft of the Guide and made important improvements. A number of other IBP staff members also assisted in writing case studies, including Helena Hofbauer, manager of the Partnership and Innovation program; Tom Zanol, program coordinator for the Partnership and Innovation program; Jennifer Sleboda, program officer; and Ifeoma Okwuje from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The Guide discusses the work undertaken by 18 budget advocacy organizations around the world. Civil society budget monitoring work, particularly expenditure tracking work, is a new field of activity, and very little documentation of it yet exists. For this reason, this Guide was possible only because of the extensive support we received from many of our partner organizations.
We owe a great deal of gratitude to many people in these organizations who assisted us in writing case studies. In particular, we thank Alicia Athie from Fundar in Mexico; Ana Quiros from Centro de Información y Servicios de Asesoría en Salud (CISAS); Ezequiel Nino, co-director of La Asociación Civil por la Igualdad y la Justicia (ACIJ) in Argentina; Kang-won Lee, director of the legislative department of the Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice (CCEJ) in South Korea; Laura Malajovich, who works with Centro de Implementación de Políticas Públicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento (CIPPEC) in Argentina; Ruth Carlitz, resource person at HakiElimu in Tanzania; and Thokozile Madonko and Debbie Dalton, researchers for the Performance Monitoring Project of the Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM) in South Africa.
Many others were interviewed to gather information for this Guide, including Aruna Roy, founder of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) in India; Clara Chindime, coordinator of the Civil Society Coalition for Quality Basic Education (CSCQBE) in Malawi; Dondon Parafina, coordinator of G-Watch in the Philippines; Emmanuel Kallonga, director of Hakikazi Catalyst in Tanzania; Gopakumar Thampi, director of the Public Affairs Center (PAC) in India; Josefina Esguerra, director of Procurement Watch Inc. (PWI) in the Philippines and Immanuel Magalit, also at PWI; Juanita Olaya, Revenue Transparency Program manager at Transparency International (TI) in Germany and Marcela Rozo, senior program coordinator for public contracting at TI; Kairat Imanaliev, chairman of Namys in Kazakhstan; and Pura Sumangil from the Concerned Citizens of Abra for Good Government (CCAGG).
The Guide went through several review processes. Special thanks are due to Debbie Budlender, research specialist at the Community Agency for Social Enquiry (CASE) in South Africa, who not only helped review the Guide but also provided detailed edits. Jim Shultz, director of the Democracy Center in Bolivia, helped write Parts I and VII. Shaamela Cassiem, manager of training at IBP, reviewed two drafts of the Guide and provided insightful comments. IBP would also like to thank Charles Griffin, senior fellow, global economy and development at the Brookings Institution in the United States; Martin Tisne, manager of the Integrity in Reconstruction project at Tiri in the United Kingdom; and Ann Blyberg, executive director of the International Human Rights Internship Program in the United States for their valuable comments.
John Springer, senior writer at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, played a crucial role in editing the Guide. Rocio Campos, program associate at IBP, assisted in the design and printing.
Finally, the Guide would not have been possible without the intellectual and financial support of the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. These foundations provide generous support to IBP for our efforts to bolster budget transparency and accountability.
IBP is inspired by the initiatives now being conducted around the world to monitor government expenditures. They demonstrate the great potential that exists for civil society to influence the budget process and to have a real impact on the lives of ordinary citizens – particularly the poor. IBP has a unique opportunity to support the growth of these initiatives, and we view this Guide as our first contribution to what will be an ongoing effort to expand expenditure monitoring work around the world.
Warren Krafchik
Director, International Budget Project
February 2008
Part I. Introduction
Why Civil Society Groups Need to Track and Monitor Budget Spending
“Sometimes our public officials seem to get confused
between what is public money and what is their money."Budget activist in Uganda
Public budgets are one of the most important issues with which governments deal. They incorporate decisions on a wide array of issues – from education to health care to taxes – that affect people’s lives in significant ways. The past decade has seen an explosion of interest among citizens and civil society groups around the world in engaging in budget issues, through a mix of analysis, public education, and advocacy.
For the most part, this work has focused on the formulation and enactment of budgets. Two previous publications from the International Budget Project (IBP) – A Guide to Budget Work for NGOs and A Guide to Tax Work for NGOs – showcase many examples of budget advocacy initiatives that are intended to influence budgets during the formulation and legislative enactment stages.2
Looking Beyond Budget Making to Budget Execution
However, influencing the development of budgets is not, by itself, enough to achieve an organization’s advocacy goals. Even more important than what a budget says it will do is what it actually ends up delivering. Do funds allocated to schools, clinics, or roads actually go to finance those things, or are they instead diverted to another program – or an official’s pocket? The goal of this guide is to help citizens and civil society groups answer that question.
By tracking budgets throughout their implementation, civil society groups can hold public officials accountable by assessing whether public resources are being spent as they are supposed to be. Further, by engaging with the budget process continuously, civil society can develop important new allies in government, including program managers in government agencies, auditors, and even ombudspersons – each of whom influences the decisions made regarding financial expenditures.
Moreover, even if a government makes an honest effort to implement the budget as it is formulated in the budget law, important questions often remain about the specifics of spending. For example, in some countries – such as India and Kenya – certain expenditures are determined only after the budget has been adopted because the budget provides some funds directly to legislators who then allocate the funds as they see fit. By engaging with the budget throughout its implementation, civil society can identify the points where “downstream” decisions like these are made and can make appropriate advocacy interventions.
Finally, a budget’s impact can usually be assessed only after expenditures have been made. By examining the impacts during and after the execution phases, civil society can hold governments accountable for the budget’s concrete results. This is especially important because government budgets often present little information on what they expect to achieve: education budgets, for example, may not detail the number of teachers to be recruited, and health budgets may not detail the number of new hospitals to be constructed. In such cases, civil society can collect information independently and thereby hold governments accountable.
In short, if civil society’s engagement ends after the budget’s formulation and adoption, it will forgo many opportunities to advance its agenda.
A Guide to this Guide
Our Money, Our Responsibility provides civil society groups with some of the basic ideas and tools they need to begin monitoring budget expenditures.
- Part One looks at the overall budget process and why there may be differences between the funding appropriated in budgets and how those funds actually get spent.
- Parts Two Five provide a close-up look at the four stages in which civil society groups can track and monitor expenditures (refer to Chart 1): budget execution, procurement, measuring impact, and the audit and legislative oversight process. (Throughout the Guide, we will use the term “budget implementation” to describe these four stages of the budget process together.)
Chart 1: Four Parts of the Budget Implementation Process
It is important to note that the procurement process is generally considered to be part of the budget execution process. However, for the purposes of presentation, we consider the two related processes viz., execution and procurement in separate Parts. Further, the impact measurement process can in some instances overlap with the auditing and oversight process, but for the purposes of this Guide, we have also separated them into two distinct Parts.
Each of these sections includes three chapters. The first provides an overview of that stage of the budget process. The second presents in-depth case studies detailing methodologies used by civil society groups to examine, analyze, and monitor government budgets. The third presents short case studies on successful civil society budget work.
- Part Six offers specific ideas on how budget groups can get started doing expenditure monitoring.
- Part Seven provides additional resources for groups ready to undertake this work.
We hope the information contained here inspires and equips civil society groups and citizens in many countries to launch themselves into this important task of true democracy.
2 IBP’s publications are available at http://www.internationalbudget.org/resources/guide/index.htm and http://www.internationalbudget.org/GuideTaxWork.pdf
1. Overview of the Budget Cycle
A budget codifies a government’s planned expenditures and anticipated revenues, reflecting its policy priorities for the coming year.3 However, the budget is more than just a single document – it is a year-long cycle of processes whose different phases offer civil society varying access points to influence budget resources, allocations, and outcomes. In this section, we discuss the budget cycle’s major events and stages.
Chart 2: The Budget Cycle
The budget cycle usually has four stages (refer to Chart 2)4:
- formulation, when the executive branch puts together the budget plan;
- enactment, when the legislature debates, alters, and approves the budget plan;
- execution, when the government implements the policies in the budget; and
- auditing and legislative assessment, when the national audit institution and the legislature account for and assess the expenditures made under the budget.
Formulation
The executive branch of government is responsible for formulating the budget. Typically, the budget office in the ministry of finance coordinates the process, requesting information from individual ministries and proposing the trade-offs necessary to fit competing government priorities into the budget’s revenue and expenditure totals. Formulation can last from a few weeks to several months, depending on the level of involvement by each ministry and the amount of negotiation that occurs.
In general, budget formulation is an incremental process in which each year’s new budget builds on the previous year’s budget. Changes from the earlier year reflect new policy priorities (particularly when a new government comes into office) as well as the effects of inflation on the cost of government activities.
Enactment
In the second stage of the budget cycle, the executive’s budget is presented to the legislature for consideration (which may include hearings in various committees) and eventual adoption. A country’s legal framework will determine the types of changes the legislature can make. Typically, both the public and civil society focus their greatest attention on the budget during this stage because it offers the most access to citizen input.
Execution
Budget execution begins when the government initiates expenditures authorized by the budget law. In practice, however, budgets are not always implemented in the exact form in which they were approved: funding levels are not always adhered to, and authorized funds are not always spent for the purposes for which they were authorized. As explained in more detail below, these deviations can reflect a number of factors, ranging from changing conditions to public corruption. When the gap between authorized and actual expenditures is large, civil society should demand an explanation.
Audits and Performance Evaluations
The last stage in the budget cycle includes a number of activities that aim to measure whether public resources have been used effectively and efficiently. Ideally, the executive branch should report on its fiscal activities to the legislature and the public. Expenditures should also be subjected to regular review by an independent and professional body, such as an audit institution or a country’s auditor general. The findings of the audit body should be submitted to the legislature, which is responsible for holding the executive accountable for its budget execution practices.
Evaluation and auditing enable the legislature to determine not only whether the government has followed the budget law, but also whether public resources are being used in the best possible way. For that reason, modern budgeting reforms place heavy emphasis on providing public entities with information on budget performance in order to improve their operations.
3 This description draws on Shapiro, “A Guide to Budget Work for NGOs.”
4 In addition to these four basic steps in the budget cycle, another step, called external ex post evaluation of budget impact is undertaken over the longer term (every few years or so) to strategically review programs. Decisions and observations made at this step are ideally reflected in the budget cycle over time as policy choices are made.
2. Why Government Expenditures Can Deviate from the Budget
There are many reasons, some legitimate and some not, why actual government expenditures might deviate from the budget passed by the legislature. They include:
Poor Financial Management Systems
Governments in developing countries frequently suffer from poor financial management systems, which weaken the quality of budget expenditures and the government’s ability to manage the flow of funds. In many countries the treasury or the finance ministry does not effectively plan cash flows throughout the financial year; as a result, spending agencies may be starved for funding during the first three quarters of the financial year but then have a significant portion of their budget dumped on them during the final quarter. In such situations, agencies feel pressure to spend the monies before the year’s end, which can lead to wasteful and even extravagant spending. By monitoring the budget throughout the year, civil society organizations can push the government to plan cash flows so that expenditures support the government’s policy goals throughout the year.
Corruption
Corruption plagues financial management in many countries, particularly developing nations with weaker financial management systems. Public officials can use a host of tricks to siphon off public funds, such as “creative accounting” and procurement irregularities. Often, corruption during budget execution can be detected only by monitoring projects during and after the execution phase.
Fund Diversions
Governments sometimes divert funds inappropriately into other programs. For example, money specifically intended to provide HIV/AIDS care might be diverted into “general hospital administration” or some other type of health care. Such diversion does not always represent a corrupt practice – and governments sometimes use legitimate channels that are part of the budget process to redirect expenditures during the course of the year. For example, “virement clauses” (refer to glossary in Part Seven) and supplementary budgets (refer to Chapter Three) are routinely used to shift funds within government or spend additional money within a program or agency. However, civil society must continuously monitor expenditures as they are incurred to ensure that budgets are implemented for their intended purposes.
Use of Reserves During Unexpected Events
Often, governments have contingency reserves they can draw on when an unexpected event occurs, such as a natural disaster. Thus, budgets are sometimes altered by budget amendments adopted to respond to specific needs. Expenditures from such contingency reserves can only be analyzed by civil society organizations as they are incurred.
Inadequate Funding
Sometimes, budgets fail to fund a program adequately. If the program is an entitlement program (for example, one under which beneficiaries are legally entitled to apply for program benefits at any time during the year), government may be legally obligated to increase funding during the year if the circumstances governing the distribution of the entitlement change. A vigilant civil society group can pressure government to meet its entitlement obligations if a budget allocation threatens to fall short.
Off-Budget Donor Funds
Poor countries often receive significant funding from bilateral and multilateral donors for development projects that are not reflected in the government budget. In such circumstances, budgets do not include the entire spectrum of public spending. In order to analyze a program comprehensively, it might be necessary to monitor its execution to fully understand its funding sources and the purposes for which the funds are being spent.
Weak Oversight
Capacity limitations often prevent public audit institutions and legislatures from providing effective oversight over national budgets. In such cases, civil society may be able to augment government’s oversight capacity. This issue will be discussed at length in Part Five.
