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The budget is a basic building block of the public financial management system. An effective budget translates government’s policies, political commitments and goals into decisions on how to use revenues and other sources of funding to meet the competing needs of the citizens. According to Chris Rowe, PERL’s Senior Public Financial Management Advisor, the budget and its cycle of preparing, approving, implementing and monitoring are critical to achieving the core principles of PFM.
But what happens when a budget is not timely, orderly, inclusive, and open to the citizens? PFM experts say there could be delays in capital expenditure, which jeopardise Value for Money; recurrent expenditure may not reflect the latest priorities of government; expenditure decisions and proposals may not be based on realistic revenue estimates, jeopardising fiscal discipline; and there may be a disparity between sector strategies and plans and the budget, which could jeopardise the efficiency of allocations.
Thus, the success or failure of a government in delivering quality and timely goods and services to its citizens are hinged on how effective, participatory, inclusive and timely a budget is. To address some of the challenges of an untimely and disorderly budget process, the Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL) recently launched a Public Budgeting App for federal and subnational governments in Nigeria.
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The virtual launch which took place on July 28th 2020 was attended by 271 stakeholders of Nigeria’s public financial management system, including Commissioners, Permanent Secretaries and Directors from State Ministries of Budget and Planning, as well as Finance; and representatives of the Federal Budget Office of the Federation and the National Economic Council (NEC) Secretariat, Federal Ministry of Budget and National Planning. Representatives of revenue agencies, local governments, the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), civil society and Budget Working groups also attended the launch.
Other participants included academics, development partners (including World Bank, EU, OXFAM), staff of PFM consulting companies, traditional rulers, the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), policy researchers, and media practitioners.
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Watch full Webinar and Launch of the Public Budgeting App
click here |
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| Speaking on the rationale for developing the App, Mr Ifeanyi Peters Ugwuoke, the National Programme Manager of PERL-ARC (the Accountable, Responsive and Capable government pillar of PERL) noted that the Public Budgeting App is one of several tools that the PERL programme has developed to support its partners. According to him, the app puts together all the budgeting processes in a single, easy to use and accessible platform for all stakeholders and users to be able to access and use more effectively. |
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The launch of the Public Budgeting App also featured goodwill remarks by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the World Bank, the Nigeria Governors’ Forum and PERL.
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A Governance Adviser for UK DFID Nigeria, Chris Okeke, expressed his satisfaction with the participation in the launch. “My hope is that, given the number of participants, the government partners and civil society that are here today, that this will begin to start to institutionalise some of the reforms around transparency and accountability and use of government resources.”
“I think this App couldn't have come at a better time, particularly in this period of remote working and COVID, where partners are able to have access to key public financial management tools”, said Mr Okeke. |
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The Director General of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, Asishana Bayo Okauru, spoke about the partnership between his organisation and the DFID-PERL programme in the development of knowledge and resources, including guidance notes, briefing and instruction notes, templates, manuals and Excel-based models that the NGF has disseminated to states to support their domestication of reforms and policies, strategy and legislation process reengineering and chain management, amongst others. He said, “In recent times the PERL programme partnered with us in developing some of the tool kits, we are using on the SFTAS program”.
Mr Okauru noted that the Public Budgeting App would be an important addition to the country's public financial management knowledge pool. ‘’Our expectation is that it helps to standardize the Budget calendar across states and serves as a useful tool to increase transparency and accountability between the government and the general public. At the most basic level, we want to see more budgets and financial statements online.” |
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The World Bank, which have been supporting the states in Nigeria, through the States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) Program, was represented by Sabah Rashid, a Lead Governance Specialist - Financial Management, at the World Bank Country Office in Abuja, Nigeria. Ms. Rashid urged the states to take advantage of the Budget App, as it is a tool that can help them in achieving the targets which have been set under the SFTAS program.
She said, “SFTAS does incentivize the preparation of a budget which is credible; credible meaning that the eventual outturn from the budget is as close as possible to what was planned at the outset, and here the budgeting App does provide you guidance as well as some very practical tools on how to enable you to achieve that.” |
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- Download the presentations made during the launch of the App
- Presentation 1: Benefits of orderly management and openness of the budget cycle
- Presentation 2: Unveiling the Public Budgeting App: The rationale, features and benefits of the app
- Presentation 3: How to use the Public Budgeting App (Public Portal)
- Experience Sharing on App Testing in Jigawa State by former PS Budget (Watch Video)
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While describing the Budget App, Chidiebere Ibe, PERL’s PFM Adviser said, “The Public Budgeting App is a web-based application with mobile versions (iOS, Android) designed for budget process management and documentation.”
Mr Ibe further complemented Chris Rowe’s emphasis on the need for orderliness and openness of the budget process while explaining the features of the App. According to him, the App was designed to facilitate the management of the budget process using a budget calendar and an alert system to promote timeliness and transparency in the budgeting process.
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How the Budget App can improve the timeliness and openness of the budgeting process
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- Digitised Budget Calendar: The App can be used to organise budget activities, usually contained in a budget call circular, into a dynamic calendar that shows budget activities and timelines graphically in the form of a gantt chart, spanning the beginning of the budget process to the end. The App provides an opportunity for the federal, state and local governments to edit the timelines and activities if necessary.
- Generic Budget Calendar: The App provides a ‘Generic Budget Calendar’ containing generic budget activities and timelines arranged according to the budget stages. The generic calendar can be adapted by each specific government to create a ‘Specific Government’ budget calendar.
- Specific Government Calendar: The App can house the federal and all state and local governments’ calendars, depending on use. This helps the citizens to know the activities of the budget ministries and to know when it is right to engage the governments.
- Generic Budget Documents: The App contains generic ‘Key Reference Documents’ linked to related budget cycle stages; including guidelines, processes and tools that can be used as a reference for, and to support each stage of the budget cycle.
- Budget Document Repository: The App holds ’Specific Government’ budget documents which relate to, and are linked to the ‘Specific Government’ budget calendar - the budget cycle stage, budget activity and budget year. The App allows the uploader (specific government) to edit and delete the document through the Admin portal, while the citizens can download the budget documents through the public portal. Thus, the Public Budgeting App provides access to budget documents for the public.
- Alert system for timeliness: The App notifies registered users about activities being carried out by governments at various levels at each stage of the budget cycle, providing appropriate links, when amendments to budget calendars are made and new documents or events are added. This will ensure that all relevant stakeholders begin and end the implementation of the budget activity in a timely manner.
- Openness of the Budget process: The App enables interested users to access generic and specific government calendars, as well as generic and specific government budget documents and related information, through the public portals. Users who want to get notification whenever a predetermined state updates its calendar or upload a document will have to register and log into the App to receive email or App notifications. The Public Budgeting App provides a means for citizens, researchers, etc. to access specific government information for further engagement or for awareness purposes.
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The Outcome of an Orderly and Open Budget Cycle:
According to Chris Rowe, an orderly and open budget cycle leads to the development of a budget that is implementable as planned; that achieves what it sets out to achieve; and that supports the key principles of PFM, which are: Aggregate Fiscal Discipline, Policy Based Allocation of Resources, and Value for Money. |
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Governments willing to use the Public Budgeting App should send a request to the following email addresses:
- info@arc.perlnigeria.net
- CIbe@arc.perlnigeria.net
- CRowe@arc.perlnigeria.net
- BObasi@arc.perlnigeria.net
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