Indexing budgets

On Wednesday, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) launched the Philippine report of the 2010 Open Budget Index (OBI), which seeks to measure how transparent and accountable governments are with budget information. The country’s score has risen to 55 this year, from 48 in 2008 OBI.

I am a newbie in the PCIJ, yet with my background in library science, the OBI has struck a familiar chord. It is an index similar to the system used in libraries to help users find information easier. While it may not make much sense on its own, an index can be an efficient tool when used properly with the sources of information that it covers.

In the same way, the OBI provides a good indication of how budget-transparent national governments are. According to the survey, the Philippines with its OBI score of 55 did better than six other countries in Southeast Asia – Indonesia (51), Thailand (42), Malaysia (39), Timor-Leste (32), Cambodia (15) and Vietnam (14). Brunei, Laos, Burma and Singapore were not covered in the OBI Survey.

Viewed from another prism, wresting the top slot in the region may not be good enough for the Philippines. As Philippine education standard go, a score of 75 (out of 100) is the passing grade a. If this yardstick were applied, the Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia should have failed the OBI test.

Rankings allow for comparison among countries, but University of the Philippines public administration Professor Leonor M. Briones explains at the forum that one must “go beyond the survey” and look further at what it did not, and could not, capture.

Briones, who is also the lead convenor of Social Watch Philippines, said that the public, and most especially the media, must scrutinize the entire budget process and not only the typically noisy and testy legislation phase, which arguably grabs the most attention.

Briones rues that two specific budget activities have been largely kept secret, or closed to the public, and involve only a few officials and legislators. The first are the hearings held by the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) during the preparation of the budget. The second are the meetings of bicameral conference committee led by the chairpersons of the Senate Finance Committee and House Committee on Appropriations. This “third house” of Congress, according to Briones, and is actually the most powerful and wields the greatest control over the final shape and mix of sums to be enrolled in the budget.

The OBI 2010 is derived from a survey composed of 123 questions related to access to national budget information, public participation and the strength of Congress and the Commission on Audit as oversight bodies. As well, the Survey looks at the eight key budget documents that, by international good practices, governments must publish.

Behind the Philippines’ score of 55 are other not-so-rosy findings of the OBI Survey. For instance, out of the eight budget documents, the Philippine government affords citizens full access to information in only three documents. These are the executive’s budget proposal, the enacted budget and in-year report. (See related story)

In Briones’s view, when it comes to technical and numbers documents like budgets are, access takes on two meanings – that copies the documents are available to the public, and that the documents are easy to comprehend. Even if the documents will be made accessible to the public, she laments there is no guarantee that the citizens could readily understand the technical language of various budget documents. By her reckoning, the hard copies of these documents are several thousands of pages long and weigh about 10 kilos in all.

Apart from Briones, Director Gil Montalbo of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM)’s Corporate Planning and Reforms Service spoke at the forum, on behalf of Budget Secretary Florencio Abad.

Transparency, Montalbo says, is a goal that the DBM wants to achieve. Indeed, as Briones had noted, being transparent does not end at providing people information but also enabling them to see and understand what the numbers in the budget mean.

The forum sparked good discussion among journalists, civil society representatives, and development agencies on how budget transparency issues connect and trigger other equally critical issues. Some participants cited how important budget information is to fostering good governance, curbing corruption, and alleviating poverty. Yet, of course, it was pointed out that access to budget information alone does not translate automatically to better government.

That much is clear to the researchers who worked on the OBI Survey. Last June in Siem Reap, Cambodia, Open Budget Initiative manager Vivek Ramkumar said that while access to information may not have an easily direct relationship to good governance in some countries, access to information should be considered as an “end” in itself.

Budget transparency empowers citizens and enables them to have a buy-in in the decisions being made by the government, he said.

The Open Budget Survey is a project of U.S.-based International Budget Partnership (IBP). The Survey was first implemented in 2006 and is currently on its third round. The PCIJ conducted research for all three round of the Survey, which was also reviewed by two independent peer reviewers and one government representative.

(Ojie Sarmiento, PCIJ’s librarian, is the new addition to the organization’s nine-member staff.)