“When a government hides its work from public view, hands out jobs and money to political cronies, administers unequal justice, looks away as corrupt bureaucrats and businessmen enrich themselves at the people’s expense, that government is failing its citizens,” stated U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the opening of the multi-country
Open Government Partnership (OGP) Forum last week. She described the new OGP “as a network of support for those leaders and citizens working to bring more transparency and accountability to governments worldwide. This can be a lonely, sometimes even dangerous, task. But through this partnership, we hope to change that.”
The OGP is also working to identify the transparency reforms to promote. The OGP used four criteria (
fiscal transparency, access to information, senior official disclosure and citizen engagement) to identify around 80 eligible countries.....
Read the rest on
http://thekaufmannpost.net/ It is interesting, though not surpising, to notice how fiscal transparency (read strategic planning and budgeting) is getting at the center of the virtuous Government. Fiscal policies and budget preparation are no longer a subject for the initiated. People at large are concerned and 'citizen budget' in all its declinations has gained momentum.
