budget4changes.org

A wide range of civil society organisations are advocating for delivery of the many promises of increased aid made by G7 and EU members over recent years. The central source of such aid is usually budgetary allocations to a key Department/agency or agencies, which are typically presented by governments to the legislature on an annual basis. Advocacy, however, is complicated by poor availability and access to real time data on budgetary commitments, the difficulty of tracing ODA-qualifying expenditures across several budgets, and the absence of a common methodology in monitoring relative performance across donors.

The Budget4Change programme will address these constraints by providing a central source of advice on technical issues (the translation of alternative budget outcomes into future levels of ODA) and a central web-space where the results of budget monitoring in major donor countries would be displayed in real time.

Budget4Change will therefore provide reliable, publicly accessible information on the relationship of donor budgets to ODA to enable national and international groups to assess the likely impact of budgets on future aid levels and to enable more effective promotion of accountability for aid promises. The programme will include the following tasks:

• Map the relationship between budgets and ODA levels in key donor countries in collaboration with domestic civil society organisations and others.
• Provide public access to clear, methodologically consistent data on the relationship between ODA and departmental budgets for current and future years.
• Update data on budget commitments and outturns and implications for ODA in real time.
• Promote access to and application of this data to enable increased accountability for meeting aid commitments, additional information for aid planners and analysts in developing countries and increased capacity to ensure that budget frameworks take proper account of aid obligations.

Prior to the launch of the functioning central website, this holding page will hold preparatory documentation and analysis.