P olitical agenda and budgeting under public scrutiny

Political agenda and budgeting under public scrutiny

HILLE HINSBERGPraxis Centre for Policy Studies

www.praxis.ee

About the organization– Private non-profit non-partisan public policy think- tank in

Estonia founded in 2000– 33 employees in 5 policy areas + Academy (training

department)– Funded via public sector procurements (60%), NGO grants

(20%), international research grants and procurements (20%);

– Annual turnover appr. 1 MEUR– Around 90 different projects/initiatives/commissioned

work yearly

Case 1: Government Watch

Initiative targeted at fighting populism and promoting political accountabilityBig question: how to empower people to get engaged and improve public policy debates?1)We analysed and „translated“ political pledges, policy issues and government plans.2)We organised discussion events to get people active and contribute to policy agenda.

Funded by Open Society Foundation

Who did we target?

Monitoring cycle: from agenda to implementation

For the election campaign:1) Prepared 6 policy analyses of campaign platforms:

1. options for tax system in Estonia,2. challenges of Estonian labour and social policies,3. future of Estonian education system,4. supporting families,5. civil society in party platform,6. choices in health care policy.

2) Held two major policy dialogue events: 1. impact of demographic gap on public policies,2. priorities for the use of EU structural funds for the period of 2014+

3) Candidate debate on civil society development.4) Organised a network of independent experts and opinion leaders who contributed to policy discussions and analyses

For the analysis of the coalition programme of elected government 2011-20151) Combined brief analyses of the topics monitored during elections: options for tax system in Estonia, challenges of Estonian labour and social policies, future of Estonian education system, supporting families, civil society vision in party platform and choices in health care policy.2) Analysed the state budget and the costs of implementing government policy choices: www.meieraha.eu, created by open data activists. The idea was to promote a more transparent budgeting process and provide information to the public on the costs related to the implementation of the government policy choices.

For the implementation of the Government Action Plan:1) Created a special website www.valvurid.ee, together

with Estonian Public Broadcasting (ERR).2) Analysed the first year of government and

highlighted main achievements and shortcomings by all policy areas - policy brief acting as media input

3) Ongoing monitoring and commenting on policy formation and implementation

4) Co-operation with media to highlight policy issues

Results of Case1 - Government Watch

• Presents „third party“views on political choices to hold politicians, parties and government accountable.

• Creates synergy and adds value by cooperation with media, civil society organisations and think-tanks.

• Increases the public’s interest towards policy making • Creates a track record of government decisions and reactions in

the society• Analyses and discussions feed into monitoring government actions

up to 2015• Actual impact: to be measured by analysing political

programmes for next elections

Case 2: Our Money - opening up the state budgetThe idea: -to visualize most important policy decisions -to show in a simple way where the money comes from and where the money goes

Data sources

1) State budget (the bill and explanatory compendium as adopted by the Parliament): 442 pages of pdf!2) Mid-term budget strategy of achieving government goals, renewed annually3) Individual budgets and work plans of ministries, used for detailed information4) Media that highlights topical issues in financial decision-making

Steps in work process

• Analytical work on available data sources to determine the most useful items of information and record the data in work files

• The collected financial data needs to be adjusted to the website features

• The code and methodology will require ongoing analysis to find the right match

Lessons learned

• Geeks are good at building applications that reuse government data in unexpected ways

• Analysts are good at mining data but the presentation has to be kept simple– Balance between accurate and simple!

• Media is good at picking up issues, but these need to be interpreted by experts

• Advocacy groups need to get engaged and be more vocal– Good choice of highlights, objective opinions

Results of Case2 - Budget visual• Presents the budget for the „ordinary guy“• Increases the public’s interest towards costs of policy decisions• Takes forward Open Data principles • Actual impact:

– Min of Finance has changed the methodology for collecting info and presenting public spending

– Government publishes full budget earlier than before– CSOs use the visual for their own financial overview

Visualizing quantitative data and access to services

What is the visual about?• The visual combines geographical data (maps) with

statistical data on selected indicators, defined by location of all 226 local municipalities in Estonia.

• Users have access to indicators in four areas, where services are rendered by local municipalities: water and sewage, social care facilities, basic and secondary education and community services, including community centres and recreational facilities.

• Financial data includes tax revenue per capita and investments per capita which show the ability to attract new residents and develop local services and infrastructure.

How to use?• The tool can be used either for browsing data or

for comparison of indicators, e.g. the water and sewage tariffs for home owners; the price per person in elderly care facility; the number of kids per teacher in your nearest kindergarten.

• The user can choose a location to log in and compare his/her home municipality and a randomly selected other municipality, or compare with the calculated average on the selected county .

Side effects

• The tool is a precedent as none of the data was available in machine-readable formats, to be automatically streamed for re-use.

• The tool demonstrated demand for providing new formats for governmental agencies which keep the databases.

What next?

• Additional data, e.g location of general practitioners and pharmacists

• Updating data, based on demand• Focus on sore topics, advocacy based on

highlighted issues