'Government budgets are the gateway drugs to development'

Executive director of the International Budget Partnership explains the merits of transparency in public finance
A boy receives medication at Nkosi's Haven, south of Johannesburg
After an NGO analysed the health budget in South Africa, provisions of antiretroviral drugs were given to 1.6 million more people. Photograph: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

At the OGP summit 2013 we spoke to Warren Krafchik, former civil society co-chair of the Open Government Partnership and executive director of the International Budget Partnership – an NGO that works with a community of civil society organisations in over 100 countries to analyse, monitor and influence government budgets.

Why is increasing transparency in government budgets such an important issue?

The budget is at the centre of development. It's the gateway drug to development. Whatever issue in development you're interested in – whether you want to improve maternal health, provide school food to children, promote human rights – even when you want to understand what's happening in the security sector or the military – you have to understand where the government is getting its money from and how that money's being spent.

How does this actually help governments?

I think that the assumption in governments, for hundreds of years, was that unlocking budgets wouldn't be in their best interests – there was an assumption that citizens don't have the skills to understand budgets. There was also a myth that if you open budgets to public scrutiny and maintain transparency, the private sector will get jittery, markets will fail. I think what we've found is exactly the opposite - that secrecy is what causes markets to be jittery.

Governments have got two things to gain by opening budgets. The first is that there is now a wealth of knowledge. There are several studies by the IMF, the International Budget Partnership and others which show that countries that have open budgets have cheaper and faster access to international credit.

The second one is more of a domestic issue: governments cannot know what's happening everywhere throughout the country. Open budgeting brings information to government that they can use to make better plans and better implementation. For example, if a government wants to build a dam in a village, they go to the village to find out where to put it. If they don't talk to the villagers they are probably going to put it in the wrong place. If they only talk to the men they're probably still going to put it in the wrong place. If they talk to the women they are going to learn a lot - about what times of the day they want water, how much they need, who gets it. Ultimately this is going to make the government more popular.

What are the best examples of how open budgeting can help people?

Opening budgets can actually transform lives. It can better align public resources with public needs. In South Africa there is still a massive HIV/aids epidemic. Previous governments have denied that epidemic. When the new government came to power they recognised the problem but still didn't really know what to do about it. So the NGO treatment action campaign analysed the budgets and took that information to the supreme court. It argued that governments have enough money in the health budget to provide antiretrovirals to all those with HIV. The court ruling changed the government's practice, and it ended up providing antiretrovirals to an additional 1.6 million people.

Also, if budgets are open, corruption is much less likely to occur. We work with a fantastic partner in India called the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights. Using budget analysis over the last couple of years It identified $150m of funding that was in the budget that should have gone to Dalit social services but was actually diverted to the commonwealth games. It could then work with the media, parliament and ultimately the minister of finance to admit the problem and to repatriate those funds.

What do you think are the biggest challenges to opening up budgets?

The biggest problem in opening budgets is that the general consensus around the world still holds that budgets should be secret. We are trying to change the culture of hundreds of years of public budgeting.

We've also got a problem with skills. People in the general population don't learn about public budgeting. There's no school course on public finance. There are very few university courses on applied public finance. There are none that I know of that teach that citizens should have a role in this process.

If we can find ways to link opening spaces and building skills then I think the rest will follow, in the sense that you then unleash the imagination of both the government and citizens to find solutions to problems.

You have handed over your role as civil society lead co-chair of the Open Government Partnership to Rakesh Rajani of Twaweza. Do you have any advice for your successor?

My successor doesn't need any advice. My successor will just do a brilliant job. I think the hardest thing to do as a chair in OGP is the same as the challenge you face in civil society in any multi-stakeholder initiative: how do you balance being an ally of the initiative, but at the same time retain the right and the space to be critical of that initiative? Playing that critical ally is a challenge.

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