Our friends at the International Budget Partnership will be releasing their 2008 Open Budget Index on February 1. For those not familiar, the Index and its component country reports are among the most in-depth assessments of national-level budget transparency available. This is must-read material for those working on transparency and accountability issues.
Via email:
How open is your government?
On February 1, 2009, the International Budget Partnership will release the Open Budget Index 2008, the only independent, comparative measure of government budget transparency in 85 countries around the world.
For the first time, data will be available on how open and accountable such countries as China, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and Democratic Republic of Congo are to their publics.
Find out:
How transparent and accountable your government is about the budget
How it stacks up against others in the region and around the world
What can it do to improveTo see the OBI 2008 results and much more, visit www.openbudgetindex.org on February 1.
Join us! As part of the OBI 2008 release, the IBP will host an event to present the results and place them in context with big issues of the day at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, from 9:30-10:30 a.m. on Monday, February 2, 2009. For more details, email us at info@internationalbudget.org.
— Nathaniel Heller
@anonymous: Canada (along with dozens of other countries) wasn’t included in this round of OBP research.
The Open Budget Partnership is similar to Global Integrity in that it builds teams of researchers in each of the countries it works in — the number of research targets included is constrained by several factors, with funding top of the list.
“Canada” does not “participate” in the sense of voluntarily joining anything — instead OBP picks the countries to examine. Maybe they’ll be covered next time around.
As a Canadian –I am wondering why Canada is not listed.Did Canada not participate or is the study so inaccurate that it does not include one of the largest land masses in the World and a relatively large economy.