Coalition Members Join Methodology for Assessing Procurement Systems (MAPS) Workshop

Tuesday, 19 March – Wednesday 20 March 2024

Members of our Coalition will this week participate in a workshop hosted by the South African National Treasury on the Methodology for the Assessing Procurement Systems (MAPS). According to the initiative’s online platform, MAPS is ‘an international standard and the universal tool to evaluate any public procurement system anywhere in the world.‘

This week’s workshop contributes to the objective of assessing South Africa’s public procurement system using this international standard (MAPS II). The assessment aims to identify strengths, weaknesses and gaps in South Africa’s public procurement system based on the benchmark provided by the tool.

We look forward to sharing insights and to receiving updates on progress with the assessment as part of our work to contribute to meaningful reform of public procurement in South Africa.

Our Lead Coordinator Joins the OGP Global Steering Committee!

Sunday, 1 October 2023

What is the Open Government Partnership (OGP)? In 2011, government leaders and civil society advocates came together to create a unique partnership—one that combines these powerful forces to promote transparent, participatory, inclusive and accountable governance.

What is the OGP Steering Committee (SC)? The SC is OGP’s executive, decision-making body whose role is to develop, promote and safeguard OGP’s values, principles and interests. It also oversees the functioning of the OGP broadly. The SC is composed of 22 members (11 from national governments and 11 from civil society), with parity maintained between the two constituencies.

Some of the key responsibilities of the SC include:

• Set OGP’s agenda and direction with principled commitment to the founding nature and goals of the initiative;
• Lead by example through upholding OGP values, adhering to OGP processes to co- create and implement ambitious open government reforms, and fulfilling financial support of OGP.
• Advance OGP priorities through their participation in the Global OGP Summit, OGP regional and thematic events, and other international opportunities to promote open government;
• Actively participate in Steering Committee and Subcommittee meetings (in-person and virtually), with Ministerial representation when necessary (at least once per year).

The SC terms begin on October 1 of the year in which they are elected. For more details on the functions of the Steering Committee and the OGP itself – visit the OGP website.

Budget Analysis and Advocacy Poll of Civil Society Needs

Wednesday, 29 March 2023

Your help is needed!

Our Coalition aims to contribute to civil society capacity to analyse public budgets, interrogate fiscal policy decisions and drive impactful budget advocacy campaigns.

We would welcome you/your organisation’s indication should you be interested in either contributing to such work and/or participating in the actual course. We’re in conversation with a range of potential collaborators and the space is open to all!

Please assist us by completing this very brief poll by 28 April 2023.

Budget 2023: Coalition Members Will be in Parliament!

Friday, 10 February 2023

The Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana will table the 2023 Budget on 22 February in Cape Town. This happens in the wake of significant announcements made in President Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) on 9 February. Members of our Coalition will be convening in Cape for a budget workshop focussed on gender responsive budgeting ahead of attending the budget lock-up in Parliament. What is a budget lock-up? Lock-ups are sessions arranged for journalists, civic actors and economists, allowing access to budget documents prior to the Minister’s address. The information contained in the documents remains under embargo until the Minister commences the Budget Speech.

National Treasury have also extended an invitation for the public to submit their view on the following via the National Treasury website here: https://bit.ly/3ruszsi :

• municipal finances
• government spending priorities and what these should be
• addressing a large budget deficit
• stabilising State-Owned Entity finances
• managing the energy crisis
• tax revenues
• debt sustainability

UNICEF and PSAM Convene Budget Analysis Trainings

Friday, 16 December 2022

In August and November 2022 the Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM) and UNICEF convened budget analysis workshops for Imali Yethu Coalition members in Makhanda and Pretoria respectively. Participating organisations included the Legal Resource Centre (LRC), Equal Education (EE) and My Vote Counts (MVC) as well as the Centre for Child Law and Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ).  The August workshop was intended as an introduction to budget analysis and covered the following:

• Reading the budget
• Locating budget information (national, provincial, departmental)
• Budget classification
• Basic calculations
• Understanding the policy context
• Introduction  to Budget analysis (assignment) 

Participants at the PSAM/UNICEF Budget Training held at the Continuing Education Centre (CEC) at Rhodes University

Our Coalition Welcomes New Members and Friends

Friday, 29 October 2021

Our Coalition is growing and we look forward to strengthening our work to deepen fiscal transparency and public participation in South Africa. In addition to renewing our existing partnerships – we’re excited to be joined by new members.

This month – we extend a warm welcome to the Legal Resources Centre (LRC).

The mission of the LRC is to to undertake evidence-informed action focused on advancing the transformation of South Africa as a democratic society, using the law as an instrument to remove persistent and pervasive structural obstacles to human rights – with a targeted focus on land and education rights.  

Coalition Statement on South Africa’s First Pre-Budget Consultations

Wednesday, 22 September 2021

On. 21 September 2021, the South African National Treasury held the country’s first pre-budget consultations. Read our statement reflecting on this historical event;

Pre-Budget Consultations on South Africa’s Fiscal Policy Go Live on 21 September 2021!

Friday, 17 September 2021

The annual Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) provides an opportunity to review the country’s fiscal policy positions following the tabling of the fiscal framework and budget at the beginning of each year. This year – as with last – the COVID-19 pandemic has brought with it much disruption. Thankfully, this has not derailed progress with our collective work on the Fiscal Openness Accelerator (FOA) project. We’re honoured to be part of the FOA Advisory Group supporting the South African National Treasury in the development of a pilot mechanism to enhance public participation in fiscal policy. Following much debate and planning, Treasury and technical support partners; the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) and the International Budget Partnership (IBP) have officially launched a pilot Pre-Budget Consultation open to all members of the public. The written submissions and registrations link is available via Vulekamali here. Interested members of the public can also join the session directly using this registration link.

Next steps on Fiscal Openness Accelerator (FOA) Project

The year 2021 kicked off with a range of productive meetings for the Advisory Group of the Fiscal Openness Accelerator (FOA) of which we are a member. The FOA seeks to support innovation to deepen participation by members of the public in fiscal policy; something that has become particularly vital in the context of major shifts around the world emanating from the impacts of COVID-19.

The FOA is supported by the US Department of State and the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Multi-Donor Trust Fund which is managed by the World Bank. The initiative covers work in Benin, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa:  http://www.fiscaltransparency.net/foaproject/

On Friday 12 March 2021 – we will participate in a meeting to be opened by the National Budget Director at the National Treasury, Edgar Sishi. Representatives of the Advisory Group include officials from the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA), National Treasury, the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA), the Human Science Research Council (HSRC) and various civil society organizations.

We look forward to contributing to the process of co-creating a pilot for deepening public participation in South with guidance from the Global Initiative on Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) and the International Budget Partnership (IBP).

Submission on National Treasury’s Draft Procurement Bill: 30 June 2020

On 30 June, Imali Yethu and the Budget Justice Coalition made a submission in response to Parliament’s Standing Committee on Finance call to provide the National Treasury with comments on the draft Public Procurement Bill.

The Bill intends to create a single framework to regulate public procurement. The realisation of the principles of fairness, equitability, transparency, competitiveness and cost-effectiveness as envisaged in section 217(3) of the Constitution being practiced when organs of state contract for goods and services, requires that there is the will for a culture of clean governance to prevail. The introduction of this bill as a necessary legislative reform will support to instill clean governance. We simultaneously urge that this legislative reform must be accompanied with improved financial management and consequence management, as well as prosecutions of those who engage in criminal acts in transgression of procurement regulations.

Read our detailed submission here: http://psam.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Submission-to-Treasury-on-Procurement-Bill_June-2020.pdf

North West Treasury joins forces with Vulekamali to increase public participation in the budget process

With the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS)  having been tabled by the Minister of Finance on 30 October – the North West Provincial Treasury will host a unique civic information drive with vulekamali. 

Our portal – vulekamali.gov.za is an easily accessible online budget data portal that is being developed alongside the National Treasury

This is aligned with our shared commitment to transparency and increased public participation in the budget process. The upcoming civic information drive (CID) will be held in partnership with the North West Provincial Treasury primarily through a budget literacy training, over two days, for both government and civil society representatives. 

The aim of the training is to raise awareness about vulekamali.gov.za, encourage participants to engage with the South African national and provincial departments budgets, and stimulate thinking on budget data-driven solutions to some of the problems experienced by local communities. This will also be an opportunity for attendees to learn more about the budget process within government, interacting with vulekamali.gov.za, and importantly, to interact with national and provincial government officials on budget-related matters.

Date: 25 and 26 November 2019

Venue: Mafikeng High School

Cost: Free

RSVP: https://create.vulekamali.gov.za/event/civic-information-drive-north-west

 “I am being empowered, I can check the website vulekamali.gov.za and approach a person (in the government department) having facts (budget information). We are starting here (at the budget training) and we now have the power to engage with the government on their level.” – CSO participant Free State Budget Training. 

Government budgets can be intimidating to try and understand as they are often presented in complicated and inaccessible formats. For this reason, Vulekamali was created, to make national and provincial government budgets more accessible to everyone in South Africa. Currently, this includes a combination of interactive visualisations, simple graphs, summarised budget documents and educational videos. At every stage of open budget portal’s development, there are opportunities for users (that’s you) to provide input on the design, content and functionality of www.vulekamali.gov.za. 

We invite all community groups and associations, North West Provincial & Local Government officials, business associations, universities and community journalists who are eager to learn more about government budgets, to send representatives to attend this event. Anyone with an interest to attend to register here: https://vulekamali.gov.za/events.

For more information about vulekamali and events, please contact Andisile Best, Andisile.Best@treasury.gov.za  or Zukiswa Kota, z.kota@ru.ac.za or @Vulekamali on twitter/ facebook.

Vulekamali in the Free State

Vulekamali in Kwazulu-Natal

Between 26 and 28 November 2018, IMALI YETHU and the National Treasury invited other civic actors and government departments to Kwazulu- Natal for a series of events to promote awareness of and engagement with vulekamali.gov.za in the province. And what a vibrant three days it was!

Represented by IMALI YETHU Lead Coordinator, Zukiswa Kota, National Treasury’s Director of Budget Reform,  Andisile Best, and OpenUP – the vulekamali team ended the last of the 2018 events on a decidedly positive note.

A briefing event took place in Pietermaritzburg on 26 November 2018 targeting government officials in the main. The objective of the session was to engage important public sector stakeholders and to demonstrate vulekamali.gov.za. We also intended to specifically explore provincial budgets, to promote openness and explore opportunities for broader (public) participation during the budget processes.

We were able to showcase resources available to assist with budget literacy training and awareness-raising. The  session was hosted in  Pietermaritzburg at the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs’ Disaster Management Centre.

One 27 and 28 November, we hosted a DataQuest and Hackathon  in Durban.

The Budget Data Quest aimed to bring together a diverse audience to explore their budget analysis and advocacy needs.

Insights were varied and came from a diverse range of participants; civic actors, public officials, budget analysts, social workers, non-profit managers and data analysts.

The Budget Hackathon assembled participants with a wide array of  skills (technical and otherwise) and problem solving abilities, with the ultimate goal of exploring solutions to budget analysis and advocacy problems. Participants are encouraged to work in teams to determine and identify solutions to problems emanating from the Dataquest.

Targeted skills include budget analysis, budget advocacy, public finance management, data wrangling, programming and creative writing. The focused, problem-solving approach of a hackathon complements the exploratory discussions in the Data Quest.

Vulekamali is launched

On 21 February 2018 Zukiswa Kota spoke to the SABC about the launch of Vulekamali.

On 20 February 2018 the VULEKAMALI Open Budget Portal for South Africa was officially launched at a briefing in Parliament. Media articles covering the launch include: https://www.enca.com/south-africa/gigaba-launches-online-budget-data-portal
Online portal gives South Africans a way to send e-tips to finance minister

On 1 February 2018 Dr Kay Brown from National Treasury appeared on SABC’s Morning Live to discuss the results of the Open Budget Index (OBI) 2017 and the collaboration between National Treasury and IMALI YETHU to develop the Open Budget Portal now called Vulekamali.

BACKGROUND
Following the official commencement of the project to develop South Africa’s online budget portal in August 2017 – much has happened. The progress has  been exciting to witness.

In September 2017,  the first data quest to inform the development of the portal took place in Pretoria. The data quest brought together experts from government, civil society, media, academia, private sector and technical communities to unpack how to make Treasury’s budget information accessible to all South Africans in order to promote citizen engagement.

Five parallel sessions were run and 27 topics were discussed. The topics covered a wide range of areas ranging from the capacity of government systems to how communities can access budget data in low-technology environments. Sessions were convened by participants and tended to be self-organised.

A short YouTube clip giving a snap shot of the data quest is viewable here. The most recent progress update issued by National Treasury on the development of an Open Budget Portal is available here.