GIFT: Americas Region of the Open Government Partnership:
Mapping of Country Fiscal Transparency Commitments [1]
15 November 2017
Summary
This paper:
· Maps, in Table 1 (p. 5), all the fiscal transparency commitments contained in the current Action Plans of seventeen OGP member countries in the Americas region,[2] against GIFT’s ten High-Level Principles of Fiscal Transparency, Participation and Accountability: http://www.fiscaltransparency.net/ft_principles/ [3], as well as against cross-cutting categories (those relating to subnational governments, anti-corruption, and ICT).
· Lists, in Table 2 (from p. 14), a short summary description of each commitment, organised against the High-Level Principles as well as by three cross-cutting categories (sub-national government, anti-corruption, ICT).
· Describes cross-country patterns in commitments.
· Draws out some notable clusters of commitments, including those relating to GIFT’s strategy of ‘putting the citizen at the centre of fiscal openness’, particularly with respect to public engagement in public service delivery, and open fiscal data.
The source of the commitments data is the OGP Explorer, which contains all the individual commitments in each country’s Action Plan.[4]
The objectives of this paper are to:
· Promote peer to peer discussions, cooperation, collaboration, and learning by:
o Identifying and classifying all the fiscal openness commitments being implemented in the region.
o Providing a snapshot of the reforms currently underway, and identifying promising commitments.
o Supporting subsequent research on how well countries are implementing their commitments, and on the impacts of the OGP.
· Promoting more ambitious, better designed, and more effectively implemented fiscal openness commitments in the region in the next round of Action Plans.
Introduction
Previous GIFT reports used information and data in IRM reports to assess the nature of fiscal transparency commitments in OGP Action Plans, and to analyse how well countries had implemented their ‘first generation’ fiscal transparency commitments.[5]
This report moves upstream to provide a more current picture of the fiscal transparency commitments being implemented in the 2016-2018 Action Plans. It does so by extracting from the OGP Explorer (the OGP’s on-line database of all Action Plans) a very short summary of each commitment that meets GIFT’s definition of fiscal transparency. Note that these Action Plans do not include those for Brazil, Chile, and Trinidad and Tobago, which are on a different action plan cycle in the OGP.
The aim is to promote more topical discussions and interactions between OGP member countries and to provide more timely input to the preparation of the next round of Action Plans.
It bears repeating that the GIFT definition of fiscal transparency – which is the basis of the commitments mapping in this paper – includes, in addition to transparency of the documents and reports associated with the annual budget cycle, transparency of related fiscal policy functions with respect to public procurement, public asset and liability management, the delivery of publicly-financed services, and public investment management. This is considerably broader than the definition the OGP Support Unit has been using for ‘budget transparency’ – although the OGP Support Unit definition is in the process of change.[6]
Box 1 describes how the mapping of fiscal transparency commitments in these OGP Action Plans was carried out.
This report takes into account the OGP Support Unit’s Research Agenda 2017-18, which identifies a number of priority research areas, topics and questions. These have informed the design of the approach to the mapping of commitments for this report. For instance, in addition to mapping commitments against the GIFT High-Level Principles, the following parameters identified by the OGP Support Unit have been included either in the mapping or in the analysis of results:
• Whether each commitment involves sub-national government;
• Whether a commitment refers to anti-corruption;
• Whether a commitment formally engages the private sector, or the media;
• Whether a commitment represents an attempt to institutionalise and embed open government reforms.
These parameters are important also specifically with respect to fiscal transparency and accountability (the first two were included in previous GIFT mappings).
Box 1: The mapping of fiscal transparency commitmentsAll the commitments in the 2016-2018 Action Plans of seventeen countries in the OGP Americas region have been assessed for relevance to fiscal transparency as defined by GIFT. As noted, this includes, in addition to the annual budget cycle, transparency, public participation and accountability with respect to tax and expenditure policies that transcend the annual budget cycle, as well as public service delivery and public investment management (including procurement).
All the fiscal transparency commitments identified have then been mapped against GIFT’s ten High-Level Principles of Fiscal Transparency, Participation and Accountability.
They have also been mapped against three cross-cutting categories (sub-national government, anti-corruption, and ICT).
Note that many commitments have been mapped to more than one High-Level Principle and/or cross-cutting category. This is to make it easier for readers to find commitments in their specific fields of interest.
For instance, all commitments that refer to sub-national government have been mapped both to that category, and to the specific topic category(s) to which they also relate. For example, a commitment to support wider public participation in budgeting at subnational level has been coded both to public participation (HLP 10) and to sub-national government. Many commitments have similarly been categorised both to transparency of outputs (HLP 4) and to public participation (HLP 10). In some cases, a commitment has been mapped to three or four categories, but only where there are specific references to each category in the text of the commitment.
There are a few composite commitments that contain a number of quite distinct sub-components. A summary description of such commitments has been included in one category in full, while some of the sub-components have been included also in other relevant categories. The commitment numbers in Table 2 are just the first level numbers, and do not include the sub-commitment numbers.
The multiple coding of commitments has not been attempted in an exhaustive or comprehensive manner; not all relevant cross-codings are picked up. In view of diminishing returns, it is hoped that something approaching an ’80:20’ result has been attained, so that the bulk of commitments have been coded to all categories that are referred to or inherent in the commitment.
Table 1 shows which countries in the Americas region have made a commitment against each of the ten GIFT High-Level Principles (HLPs). Note that, because of the scope of two of the Principles (HLPs 3 and 4) and the large number of commitments, they have been disaggregated to give a more fine-grained indication of what the commitments cover.
It is important to note again that many commitments have been mapped to more than one category to aid identification of relevant activities by readers who may be interested in only one or a few specific topics. This means that while there are 115 commitments in table 1, there are only 98 discrete (separate) fiscal transparency commitments.
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Table 1: Pattern of OGP Americas Country Commitments Against GIFT High-Level Principles
GIFT High-Level Principle / Page reference / Countries making related OGP commitments / Number of commitments /HLP 1 Right to Fiscal Information / 14 / Costa Rica, Dominican Republic / 4
HLP 2 Aggregate fiscal policy / 14 / 0
HLP 3: Past/present/forecast fiscal information.
Of which: / 41
3a) Budget transparency general / 14 / Canada, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, Uruguay / 10
3b) Fiscal Reporting / 15 / Argentina, Panama, Peru / 6
3c) Revenues general / 16 / Canada, Guatemala, Uruguay / 3
3d) Natural resource revenues / 16 / Canada, Colombia, Peru, USA / 5
3e) External financing / 16 / Canada, USA / 2
3f) Public investment mgmt. / 17 / Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Paraguay, Uruguay, USA / 9
3g) Open fiscal data / 17 / Colombia, Guatemala, Uruguay, USA / 5
3h) SDGs / 18 / USA / 1
HLP 4: Outputs and outcomes.
Of which: / 25
4a) Performance information / 18 / Canada, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Uruguay, USA / 8
4b) Social monitoring / 19 / Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, USA / 17
HLP 5: Legal Framework / 20 / Honduras, Panama / 7
HLP 6: Govt./private sector / 21 / Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Peru, Uruguay / 10
HLP 7: Clarity of roles / 22 / El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, USA / 5
HLP 8: Legislative oversight / 22 / Panama / 1
HLP 9: Independent audit / 23 / Costa Rica / 1
HLP 10: Public participation / 23 / Colombia, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, USA / 21
Total / 115
Total discrete FTPA commitments[7] / 98
Cross-cutting commitments
A Subnational government / 24 / Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Uruguay, USA / 8
B Anti-corruption / 25 / Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, USA / 14
C ICT / 26 / El Salvador, Honduras / 3
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Graphs 1 and 2 illustrate the patterns of commitments against the HLPs.
Graph 1: Commitments by GIFT High-Level Principle
Graph 2: Commitments within High-Level Principle 3:
past, present, forecast fiscal information
The graphs highlight some patterns:
· Most of the commitments are related to HLP 3 (disclosure of past, present and forecast fiscal information), HLP 4 (transparency of outputs, mainly of public services), and HLP 10 (direct public participation in fiscal policy design and implementation). The last two areas reflect two of GIFT’s current priority areas of focus.
· Within HLP 3, most commitments are on general budget transparency, followed by public investment, fiscal reporting, and revenue transparency.
· The areas with minimal or no commitments are transparency of macro-fiscal policy (HLP 3), legislative oversight (HLP 8), and independent audit (HLP 9). These are some of the key areas of fiscal transparency and accountability. The reasons are likely due to legislatures and SAIs not generally being directly engaged in the OGP process within member countries.
In terms of the proportions of these countries’ action plans that are made up of fiscal transparency commitments, graph 3 displays the percentages for each country, and for the total.[8]
Graph 3 shows that fiscal transparency, participation and accountability commitments comprise 32% of total commitments in these action plans (98 out of 309). This ranges from 20% for Argentina and Uruguay, to 60% for Paraguay.
A previous GIFT analysis assessed the first fifty-one OGP Action Plans, based on the first IRM report for each of the 51 countries, making it a completely different set of Action Plans than those analysed in this paper. That paper identified a total of 378 commitments relating to fiscal transparency, which was 33% of all commitments in that set of Plans. Forty eight of the fifty-one countries had fiscal transparency commitments, ranging from 0% (Chile and Panama) to 100% (Guatemala).[9]
Graph 3: Fiscal transparency commitments as share of total commitments
The average share of FTPA commitments in total commitments in country action plans remains very similar at just under the one third level. However, the range of country share of FT commitments in total commitments is much narrower in this data set (20-60%, versus 0% to 100% in the earlier data set).
It is important to recall that experience in the OGP is that the degree of actual implementation of commitments in Action Plans is highly variable across countries, and is disappointingly low.
Figure 1 presents data on rates of completion of fiscal transparency commitments from the first 51 IRM reports. It shows that 52% of commitments were rated by the independent reviewers as either completed only to a limited extent, not started, or unclear or withdrawn.
[10]
Improving implementation rates of fiscal transparency commitments and their impacts remains a crucial objective for the OGP.
A future GIFT report will assess how well the fiscal transparency commitments in these current Action Plans have been implemented, using information and data in the yet-to-be published IRM reports for these countries.
Table 2 starting on page 14 displays the commitment number in the original country action plan (for ease of reference), together with a short description of each activity (an often heavily summarised version of the commitment as it appears in the OGP Explorer), grouped first under the relevant GIFT High-Level Principle. Table 2 also indicates whether each Action Plan is that country’s first, second, third, or fourth plan (the number in brackets under the country name).
Table 2 also contains, in addition to mapping by the ten HLPs, three additional cross-cutting categories:
A) Sub-national government: 8 commitments
B) Anti-corruption: 14 commitments
C) Commitments involving use of information and communication technologies (ICT): 3 commitments.
There are at least fifteen commitments that involve engagement of the private sector. These are the five EITI-related commitments, and the ten procurement-related commitments.
Approaches that attempt to institutionalise reforms include the seven commitments under HLP 5 (legal framework for public financial management), three or four commitments across a number of principles that involve creating or strengthening governance bodies or introducing new elements in standard operating procedures, and some commitments that refer to adhering to international fiscal transparency standards (e.g. EITI, Open Contracting).
In addition, it is interesting to note that there are some references to improving country performance on international standards, norms, or assessment instruments e.g. the Open Budget Index, the IMF’s Fiscal Transparency Code, and the OECD Global Tax Transparency Forum Standard, and GIFT’s Principles of Public Participation in Fiscal Policy.[11]
There are no commitments related to freedom of the media.
GIFT’s strategy of ‘putting the citizen at the centre of fiscal openness’
It is interesting to note that there are numerous commitments that involve either improving public services, or increasing citizen engagement in fiscal policy, or both (see commitments under HLP 4 and HLP 10 in Table 2).
Some of these relate to transparency and accountability at the level of the individual service delivery unit e.g. school or health centre – the point of direct contact between citizens and state.