Budget Promises – Beyond Parliament - Observatory of Public Sector Innovation

‘Budget Promises: Beyond Parliament’ is Sri Lanka’s pioneering budget monitoring platform, created to answer two basic questions about the government’s annual budget – 1) is the government doing what they are saying? and 2) is the government saying what they are doing? Since its launch, the platform has been a primary source for citizens, media, and researchers to track progress on budget promises.

Innovation Summary

Innovation Overview

Every year, Sri Lankans tune in with much interest to the government’s annual budget speech, which outlines how the Government of Sri Lanka plans to collect revenue (through taxes) and spend public money over the following year. While there is significant attention given to these proposals during the budget speech and debate stage, there is less discussion and follow-up on the implementation of these proposals after the budget is passed in parliament. This leaves space for the government to neglect, ignore, or go back on the promises they have made in the budget.

The online platform BudgetPromises.Org, also known as “Budget Promises: Beyond Parliament” addresses this gap. This platform, launched in 2017, tracks budget proposals with an allocation of LKR (Sri Lanka Rupee) 1 billion and above to see how much of what was promised has actually been implemented. It does this by asking two key questions: (i) is the government doing what they are saying? and (ii) is the government saying what they are doing? The answers to these two questions are tracked using two indicators. First is the openness indicator. It measures the willingness of government agencies to provide information about what they are doing in terms of executing the promises. Second is the progress indicator, which tracks the actual progress made.

While the platform makes the government’s budget promises more transparent and accessible to the general public, the main goal of this initiative is to help taxpayers hold the government accountable for how they are spending public funds according to the promises they have made.

Using a rigorous communications strategy to promote the platform, including press briefings, social media, and press articles, BudgetPromises.Org soon became the go-to platform for information on budget implementation in Sri Lanka. The platform particularly piqued the interests of the media, who used its findings to report on the overall status of implementation of the government’s budget promises. Through their reporting of progress and openness of promises, members of the public are now able to 1) consume information on issues pertaining to budget proposals in a clear and concise manner, through our interactive audio-visual tools and easy to understand analysis pieces, and 2) have the information necessary to hold the government accountable for the progress, or lack thereof, of budget promises.

Feeding off the success of the platform, we hope to evolve BudgetPromises.Org to become the Public Finance Platform (PFP), tracking and monitoring the entire cycle of public finance management in Sri Lanka, from design to disbursement. A key finding of the current budget tracking processes has also been that major constraints exist not only in budget execution but also in budget planning and design. The proposed PFP will therefore expand the existing platform to track the entire government budgeting cycle, from conception to close, creating transparency and accountability in the entire public finance management process.

Innovation Description

What Makes Your Project Innovative?

BudgetPromises.Org is unique in 2 ways. First, the platform is designed to deliver ‘data driven analysis’. In Sri Lanka, the public tend to base important discussions on opinions rather than facts. This is certainly the case when it comes to evaluating the performance of the government and is also fueled by sensational media reporting that is not based on economic analysis or data. At Verité Research, we believe in the importance of shifting the public mindset from opinion to information. BudgetPromises.Org is built on this foundation and has thus become the only initiative in the country that effectively quantifies the government’s budget promises. Second, BudgetPromises.Org does not stop at presenting information on its platform. We believe that how we communicate something, defines what we say. Verité’s communications team works hard to ensure that the information on the platform is delivered to the public in a way that is concise, dynamic and enticing.

Innovation Development

Collaborations & Partnerships

During the design process, we consulted multiple stakeholders such as web developers, designers, and our own staff. We consulted web developers to see what the best fit for us would be, in terms of functions and user experience. We also worked with internal and external graphic designers to create logos, infographics, and colour schemes. Further, many of our own researchers were consulted on the user experience of the platform, to get their feedback on how the platform can be improved.

Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

Two main groups were identified as beneficiaries:
a. Citizens – For the first time, citizens have a one-stop-shop for information on the implementation status of budget promises and can hold the government accountable for their actions.
b. Media – The media now have detailed, quantified information on how much the government has delivered on their promises. They are able to use this in their reporting to make the public more informed and put pressure on the government to fulfill their promises

Innovation Reflections

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

• There was widespread media attention on the findings of BudgetPromises.Org, including press citations and TV and radio interviews/features. Many journalists used the findings to bring awareness to the government’s lack of implementation of their budget promises. The platform also received a high level of engagement on social media.
• Results and impacts are measured as follows:
a. Media trackers with citations, TV/radio engagement
b. Website analytics, i.e. pageviews, visitors
c. References to the platform by public officials and parliamentarians
• Moving forward, we hope to replicate the results we got in terms of media traction in the vernacular press (i.e. Sinhala and Tamil). Initially, most media engagement happened in English. Further, we hope to refine our monitoring and evaluation framework to capture the extent to which members of the public are aware of the platform and have found it useful, particularly in non-urban areas.

Challenges and Failures

A key challenge we have faced is accessing the information necessary to determine the progress of budget promises. Information on government websites was scarce. The team had to depend heavily on Right to Information (RTI) requests to obtain information. This process was a cumbersome and time-consuming one. Authorities’ reluctance to give information resulted frequent follow-ups, long delays before information is received and often a lack of information that can be used to assess progress. To address this issue, we fine-tuned our RTI filing processes to ensure that it is tracked from beginning to end, sometimes all the way up to the stage of appealing to the RTI Commission for the information to be handed over. This has helped improve responses.

Conditions for Success

The following 2 conditions have been imperative for the success of BudgetPromises.Org
• Team work & collaboration
- The team comprises of both researchers and managers. While the former is responsible for data collection and analysis, the latter takes responsibility for the management of the website and any other administrative tasks. However, when the time comes for new findings to be launched, roles and responsibilities become less defined and the whole team works together to ensure the best results. This combined with a strong work ethic has contributed to the success of the platform.
• Planning & consistency
- Each new cycle of releasing the findings is planned meticulously, starting from mapping the desired outcome (i.e. the message we want to drive) to the exact activities we will use to drive that message. This happens with close collaboration between the research team and the communications team.This has remained consistent throughout and helps us achieve our targets.

Replication

To our knowledge, BudgetPromises.Org has not been replicated anywhere else in Sri Lanka or internationally. However, this is not the first initiative of this nature done by Verité Research. The organization has championed other platforms such as Manthri.lk, Sri Lanka’s pioneering parliamentary monitoring platform that aims to quantify and profile the actions of parliamentarians. Similarly, we have also previously profiled the government’s progress in fulfilling the commitments under UNHRC Resolution 30/1, which outlines commitments made by the government of Sri Lanka on a range of measures dealing with human rights, accountability, and reconciliation. Quantifying the unquantifiable, so that ordinary citizens have the right information to make informed decisions, is a central theme in a lot of the work undertaken by Verité Research. It is our hope that other research organisations use this framework to produce similar platforms.

Lessons Learned

• What’s interesting to you is not necessarily interesting to others - Making budget issues relevant to the public is not always easy. In Sri Lanka, the budget is highly politicized and discussed in the media in the lead up to and immediately after the budget speech. While this makes the budget speech interesting to citizens, it doesn’t mean that they will find a budget monitoring platform relevant to their lives. To bridge this gap, it is important to communicate our findings in a way that is relevant to anyone. This is a challenge that we first faced at the initial stages and have become mindful of in moving forward with our communication efforts.

• Be consistent - As soon as you launch something new, there will certainly be a buzz if it’s interesting enough – what’s more challenging is to keep the momentum going past the initial excitement. We learnt that making a budget related initiative such as this relevant throughout the year (not just during a budget speech) is difficult. This requires a solid communications strategy that consistently delivers throughout the year.

• Don’t underestimate how hard managing websites can be - Building a new website is hard, specially when you are not specialized in web development. You will be the one handling the content, so you need to feel like you have control of your own platform. We faced many challenges in terms of communicating our exact needs to the web developer, as well as getting them to deliver on time. Make sure you talk to different web developers until you find the right fit for you. The web developer should not only give you technical solutions, but they must also believe in your purpose and vision.

• Language matters - Initially, we placed too much emphasis on communication in English, even though the platform was trilingual. We then realized that to reach the majority of people in the country, we needed to start communicating effectively in the local languages - Sinhala and Tamil - as well. Communicating effectively in multiple languages goes beyond merely translating what is produced in English – content needs to be thought through and framed differently in different languages. This is an important lesson that we learnt, and are currently working on putting out more content in the local languages.