ICT Combats Government Corruption, Improves Transparency
RTI is helping municipalities in Bulgaria and Ukraine create open, accountable government and combat corruption through information and communication technology (ICT) systems.
In the Local Government Initiative (LGI) in Bulgaria and the Municipal Budget Reform (MBR) project in Ukraine, RTI is assisting municipal governments in developing scalable ICT systems that promote transparency and consolidate services. And in both countries, the projects encourage sustainable change through local businesses that develop and service the systems. The Bulgaria LGI and Ukraine MBR projects are funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Property Record Transparency in Bulgaria
In 2006, issues of government corruption came to a head in Bulgaria. Surveys showed that Bulgarian citizens ranked corruption as a top public concern—and that it threatened to block or delay the country's accession to the European Union (EU).
Illegal municipal sales of public property and corrupt procurement fueled demands for transparency of property records. In 2004, the mayor of Plovdiv sanctioned construction of a six-story office building and underground garage on the site of the city's ancient Roman forum. The property was classified as public municipal property but was sold as a private municipal estate.
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| In Bulgaria, property management data will be accessible on municipal Web sites and at Customer Service Centers, such as this one in Stara Zagora. [PHOTO: Gordon Cressman] |
The Bulgarian Municipal Property Act of 2004 requires publication of property registers to expose such classification changes and provide advance public notice of sales. However, most municipalities do not have the information systems needed to comply with the law and to make public property transaction records easily available to citizens.
RTI is collaborating with four LGI pilot municipalities—Stara Zagora, Karlova, Veliko Turnovo, and Gabrovo—to design the Municipal Asset Management System to improve property management transparency and efficiency. The system imports data from ESGRAON, Bulgaria's civic and vital statistics system, which assigns each citizen a unique identifier. Linkage with ESGRAON allows the property management system to recognize the identifiers of individuals who rent or purchase public property.
The system will give citizens convenient access to information about municipal property classification and sales through municipal Customer Service Centers (CSCs)—pioneered by USAID's LGI and the Bulgarian Foundation for Local Government Reform (FLGR).
To develop the Municipal Asset Management System, RTI joined with MAG-GIS, a Stara Zagora company selected through an open, competitive proposal process. MAG-GIS developed a secure networked database and client software. Property deeds and rent payments modules are now in use in Stara Zagora. The system will be available to other municipalities through MAG-GIS, giving the company an opportunity to grow its business. "We are very glad to see a product custom-made for Bulgarian municipalities, which will increase the efficiency of municipal administrations by 20 to 30% and provide easy access to all property-related data to both citizens and potential investors," said Angel Markov, LGI Task Manager.
Stara Zagora officials are pleased with the system's tracking functions and capabilities to promote transparency through standard recording procedures and automated reporting features. The system "allows the municipality to maintain up-to-date information about the status of each property and to track costs and revenues generated by each individual property," said Deputy Mayor Tihomir Dimitrov, who is responsible for the city's property management and economic policies. "Management of municipal property will become better structured and more transparent," said Dimitrov.
Budget Accountability in Ukraine
RTI, through the MBR project, is working with 85 Ukrainian municipalities to transform their budgeting processes so that they no longer occur behind a wall of secrecy, but instead are purposeful, open, and based on the integration of allocations and expected results that are monitored for effectiveness.
The project's goals were set in motion by The Budget Code of Ukraine, adopted in 2001 to end fiscal allocations to cities according to their compliance with regional demands. The law calls for formula-based budgetary transfers from the national treasury directly to larger cities and towns, eliminating opportunities for regional deal making.
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| MBR Software Project Manager Sergey Garbar (right) works with finance specialists from Slavuta, Ukraine, to enter data using the MBR Program Performance Budgeting software. [PHOTO: Myroslav Kulchytskyy] |
RTI assists municipalities in managing and allocating funds through program performance budgeting (PPB) methods. PPB-based budgets require a statement of purpose and specified amounts of funding for each service provided, enabling municipal officials to more precisely define their service needs and measure performance. This deliberative process emphasizes public priorities and includes regularly published reports for citizens.
An ICT solution has been essential to PPB's success in Ukraine. The MBR Program Performance Budgeting Software, created by the MBR team for the country's municipal finance specialists, captures the principles of PPB in easy-to-use, Ukrainian language interfaces, and is compatible with national budgeting software. Planning, execution, and analysis modules incorporate built-in accounting functions that mirror the budget development process. The system is network-based, and the client-server software was created on the 1C® platform. RTI also designed a Web site (www.mbr-ukr.org) with information about the budget process and links to updates of the software and user manual.
To address needs for hardware, such as servers, routers, and other equipment for local area networks (LANs), RTI conducted ICT assessments of the 85 municipalities. A Ukrainian vendor, E-Consulting, was then selected through a proposal submission process to deliver, install, configure, and support network equipment, which is owned by the municipalities.
Municipalities that use PPB can more productively allocate scarce funds. Ms. Valentyna Demchuk, Deputy Mayor of Dubno, explained that Dubno finance specialists used the software's budget execution monitoring module to analyze costs per pupil in local schools. “We detected that the number of pupils in a class differs, but the costs are the same. Based on this information, we are going to reduce the number of classes and increase the number of pupils per class next year, and to budget funds per pupil, not per whole class,” Demchuk said.
More information:
Gordon Cressman, e-mail gmc@rti.org
Niamh Darcy, e-mail ndarcy@rti.org
Ukraine Municipal Budget Reform Web site: www.mbr-ukr.org