The International Budget Partnership has launched the Ask Your Government Campaign to examine what happens when citizens request specific budget information from their governments related to development issues, including issues addressed in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). As part of this campaign, they have created a petition to demand that the governments attending the upcoming MDG summit adopt requirements for greater budget transparency.

Over the past four months, civil society organizations in 84 countries have simultaneously asked their governments six questions related to MDGs 5, 7, and 8. Two of the questions focus on expenditures on training midwives and the procurement of drugs to reduce maternal mortality. Two others focus on the predictability and volatility of development aid, and the final questions focus on government expenditures on environmental protection agencies and fossil fuel subsidies.

Noting that greater accountability in the MDG process can be strengthened by incorporating requirements that governments provide detailed and comprehensive budget information on their development commitments, IPB is making the following recommendations to achieve results at the upcoming MDG summit:

• Require countries to consistently include additional budget information in the annual MDG country reports. Governments currently must generate measurable indicators of progress toward the MDGs under the UN’s DevInfo system (an electronic platform for gathering and generating statistical information specifically related to progress on the MDGs). The budget information that should be required should include budgeted allocations and actual expenditures on key interventions that are linked to these indicators.

• Require all regional- and international-level MDG reports to include annual budget information on government efforts to realize each goal from 2011 to 2015, through an addendum to the MDG reporting guidelines.

• Include measures of budget transparency, such as the Open Budget Index, as an indicator of progress toward realizing the MDGs.

• Provide technical support to governments on how to meet these requirements for reporting budget information, as part of the technical assistance activities for MDG tracking.

• Require donor countries to publish information on their MDG-related funding.

Further information on the Ask Your Government Campaign is available here.

Source: NGLS