The project “Improving Transparency of Local Self-Government Public Finance Management” is implemented through an agreement signed between the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities (SCTM) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), with the financial support of the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). The project is a continuation of the previous phase of 2016-2018, which tested the approach to introducing public budget portals (PBP) in 10 pilot local self-governments.
Project duration is August 2019 - September 2021. Under the current project, support is provided for 21 new LSGs for the introduction of PBP, with continued cooperation with 10 pilot LSGs to provide the necessary improvements in the use of PBP.
Local self-governments receiving this type of support are: Medvedja, Paracin, Kursumlija, Uzice, Sombor, Loznica, Sabac, Vlasotince, Varvarin, Tutin, Gadzin Han, Kovin, Boljevac, Sokobanja, Bojnik, Topola, Lapovo, Becej, Pozega, Cuprija, and Petrovac na Mlavi.
PBP is an electronic reporting system for LSG assemblies, primarily for the purpose of informing councilors and assembly services about the LSG budget. It is a platform that allows members of the local assembly to monitor the process of preparing and executing the local budget. In this way, councilors are able to engage in the budget preparation process on time, through consistent monitoring of budget preparation and execution throughout the year. Although PBP is designed to be a tool for better informing councilors about the LSG budget, towns and municipalities are encouraged to make this portal truly public, i.e. to put it on the official LSG website and thus establish a useful budget information base for the wider local community and all interested public. In this case, citizens and all other interested parties would have access to the PBP in addition to the councilors.
Successful implementation of the new phase of the project should provide: facilitated access of the municipal councilors with the necessary information for the budget cycle, monitoring, preparation and execution of the budget throughout the year, possibility of better informing the citizens/public in those LSG who decided to present the portal on the official website, and increasing the responsibility of budget users and strengthening the role of citizens in deciding on budget issues and sharing responsibilities with them.
The project is being implemented as part of a broader portfolio of UNDP in Serbia funded by Sida (Swedish International Development Agency) - "Platform for Responsible Finance Management" - with SCTM being one of the project partners responsible for the transparency component of public finance management at the local level.
Contact: bojana.prastalo@skgo.org