Although the government’s money belongs to the people in a country, little, if any, information about the government’s budget—what the government intends to do or has done with that money—is readily available to the people of most countries.  This situation contravenes international guarantees of the right of access to government information guaranteed in article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other documents.

Indeed, access to government information is the most common and significant problem groups doing budget work face. As a result, the priority of many of these groups is advocating for greater access to budget information and other government data necessary to understand the implications of budget figures. They also pressure governments to develop certain essential data not already available—for example, population figures disaggregated by ethnic group—and to develop budgets that are more readily understandable by civil society (e.g., “citizens’ budgets”). Further information about civil society work on budget transparency is available at the IBP web site.

Another invaluable resource related to budget transparency is the IBP’s Open Budget Index. The OBI is the result of an analysis of the relative transparency of budget information in 85 countries around the world. It pinpoints which budget information is readily available in a country and which is not, and how one country compares in its openness on budget information to other countries.

Most groups working on transparency do not regularly articulate a human rights framework for their work, although national, regional and international human rights guarantees related to access to information could provide a strong legal underpinning for the work. Extensive information on existing guarantees on access to information is available from UNESCO.