The Swedish International Centre for Local Democracy (ICLD) is facilitating a Research Project on the improvement of local budget processes in North Macedonia titled “Through inclusion and transparency, to equity and quality. Improvement of the local budget processes in North Macedonia”.
The objective of the project is to investigate how equitable, inclusive, transparent and accountable budget processes are to be implemeted at local government level, and at the same time to propose measures to improve them, and through that, to contribute to the development of local democracy in North Macedonia. The project will be implemented in four pilot municipalities from different regions, with the ambition to expand to all 81 municipalities in the future. The project involves conducting an initial citizen survey in the four municipalities, analysis of the survey with respect to the questions of interest, fieldwork with the municipalities and the citizens in order to improve the state of affairs, second survey in order to assess the results at the end of the project, development of web platform for presenting local budgets and engaging citizens during the whole process and development of an index for assessing municipalities with respect to equity, inclusion, transparency and accountability.
As a result of the research and based on the research in North Macedonia, a policy brief was published to get inspired about 4 simple ways to make local budget more transparent for citizens. To watch the video make sure to click this link. Additionally, a toolbox helping to communicate the local budget to citizens in a simple and understandable way is also available: Citizens Budget: Make the budget understandable for every citizen.
Last but not least, all interested members are welcome to join the free online workshop, Make a Citizens Budget, organized by the lead author of the research project on the 27th of April, 14:00 CEST.