Budget transparency to improve our politics

Unless you've been living under a rock, you will have noticed that budget transparency was a major issue in the recent election.

Budget transparency is about how well the government accounts to the public regarding allocated funding and this includes proactive engagement of the community with government spending decisions.

This extends from reporting spending to the public to involving the public in spending decisions such as the ACT's current budget consultation or the participatory budgeting initiatives being piloted in the US.

Measuring budget transparency

There is an organisation called the International Budget Partnership whose mission is to "collaborates with civil society around the world to analyze and influence public budgets in order to reduce poverty and improve the quality of governance."

Few Australians know it but this project supports organisations to run surveys of how well each country performs in budget transparency. The Open Budget Survey gives every participating country a score on budget transparency. Currently NZ is in the top position. Australia, on the other hand, has no score as we do not participate.

Budget Transparency for everyday Australians

In early 2008, Australia's lack of budget transparency made headlines when Greg Combet and Nicola Roxon sought a High Court injunction against the Howard government's use of funding appropriated under the Outcome 'Higher Pay, Higher Productivity' to pay for the WorkChoices media campaign. One of only two Outcomes set out under the Liberals for the Department of Workplace Relations, the Outcome accounted for half the departmental budget.

When Combet challenged the right of the Howard government to use funds for WorkChoices campaigning, the High Court observed that such phrasing was so imprecise as to allow almost anything to be funded and so it could find no fault with the use of allocated funds despite the Australian public and parliament never having assented specifically to that use.

What was found to be unacceptable by Labor in opposition was that such a situation is not an appropriate level of accountability for a modern nation state and the ALP's Lindsay Tanner made it an election promise to improve transparency standards. Operation Sunlight was born.

Reviewed by Andrew Murray, Operation Sunlight (2008) said some very basic things about how the government should be accounting to the public for the funds appropriated through the parliamentary process- so basic in fact that it is stunning to realise so much had got by so many of us for so long.

The accomplishment of Operation Sunlight was that for the first time, rather than to merely provide vague 'Outcomes' for the entire portfolio, agencies are now required to specify each program in the portfolio in the Portfolio Budget Statements. Not only that, agencies are now also required to include in the PBS' evaluations of each Program's success or failure. Imagine that! We must remind ourselves this was a few short years ago. (Example)

More recently, the government has passed a policy to make all of its publications available under Creative Commons 3.0 for commercial or non-commercial use. This also has positive implications for transparency.

The 2011-12 and 2013-14 budget papers have been published under this licence which has allowed me to undertake an independent analysis of government spending based on the data within. This is no small task and it was only after I created my first set of figures and coded searches to total up spending on terms across all agencies and portfolios that I found out what a radical notion such simple functionality is to Australian citizens!

To date our Portfolio Budget Statements have been published only in PDF and Word Documents (at budget.gov.au). This format prevents people searching across them in any way. The site and the documents themselves are so lacking in any attempt to engage that most people I speak to, including those who must make use of them in their work, will do almost anything to avoid having to read them.

In a world of databases, in the information age, it certainly begs an explanation as to why our federal budget has been kept in such an unusable format? The AFR reports that from next year budget data will be released to the government's new open data portal at data.gov.au, in formats which make plugging it into sites like BudgetAus a less expensive and painful process.

However, there is more to budget transparency than just giving people the figures. Analysis and engagement are the real outcomes of transparency efforts and this is what BudgetAus provides. BudgetAus is now in the process of reconciling the figures taken from the Portfolio Budget Statements to check the estimated/projected surpluses and deficits published by the last government. I am now also trying to establish good relations with Treasury so the new government can provide its own policy costings in a way suitable for accurate entry into my system prior to May 2014.

Australians should not have to wait months at a time to get access to the figures in a way that enables them to make informed decisions about policy and public debate. The more educated people are, the less opportunity there is for budget information to be used for political purposes and the better political discourse will be for it. Over the past year I have spoken to many people from all walks of life about political discourse in this country and not once has anyone ever claimed to be anything less than disgusted by it. Projects like BudgetAus raise the bar because they raise the collective IQ on matters that to date we have been told- in effect- not to worry our pretty little heads about.

BudgetAus should not be one solitary voice in the wilderness. Whether you are from the business community, an activist or an engaged citizen, a project like BudgetAus allows people to engage with the budget data as never before and understand what is really going on behind the press releases and catch phrases.

Even a cursory look at the programs listed by size shows what the country is up against in creating a sustainable economy and highlights the significance of structural and demographic issues which will affect Australia long after this government is a memory and we are faced with the consequences of the choices we make today. Having educated myself through BudgetAus, I make the case that we can not afford not to be informed. Become a BudgetAus user and supporter.