Interactive municipal budget
About this good practice
Budget information is available to citizens in several Hungarian cities, but in a format that is complicated and difficult to understand, therefore, most citizens do not really know how money is spent in their city and/or district.
Zugló (District XIV of Budapest) wanted to make its budget more transparent, so they designed a pilot website that provides detailed information to citizens on the municipal budget in an easy-to-use and -understand format. The budget categories are shown on the page in two views: (1) the functional view classifies budget expenditures by socio-economic purpose (e.g. education, healthcare) while (2) the economic view shows the composition of expenditures based on their operating nature (personnel, materials, investments, etc.).
The district considered this experiment important not only because of transparency and accountability – the municipality intended to inform citizens about the budget, but also actively involve them in budget planning. This process has started with participative sessions about a small amount of money which the citizens could distribute between several projects by voting.
Resources needed
IT: website HR: The budget must be uploaded, requiring the expertise of at least one person, but participatory planning necessitates more people (for budgeting the project ideas of the citizens, setting up the voting, etc.). The district allocated 65,000 euros for participatory budgeting in 2018.
Evidence of success
This good practice facilitates better citizen involvement – in the framework of the participatory budgeting activities, 8 projects were co-developed with the citizens and the municipality’s experts. After each project was budgeted (with an overall amount of 122,000 euros), the citizens could distribute 65,000 euros between them by voting. As a result, 3 projects were selected and implemented from the originally allocated money, but the district also decided to implement the next two on the list.
Potential for learning or transfer
Making a municipality budget more transparent and thus the politicians more accountable is an important first step towards more responsible citizenship and active participation in local matters. As a new, digital solution to facilitate better citizen involvement, this could contribute to building trust, which leads to more active participation and to the use of other new services. Introducing such a tool is fairly easy and inexpensive – but very important. The website was created with an open-source code, so that other municipalities can follow suit and adopt it.
Further information
Website
Good practice owner
You can contact the good practice owner below for more detailed information.
