Excerpt:
"MUCH is made over the budget speech tabled by the prime minister in Parliament in October each year.
Link
"MUCH is made over the budget speech tabled by the prime minister in Parliament in October each year.
And rightly so, since it is supposed to be the government's financial blueprint for the following year: how much goes where, to whom and for what.
What most Malaysians do not realise is that the budget speech is not the budget.
The speech is meant to articulate an overarching theme, specifying which areas are given emphasis in the coming year.
Perhaps the prime minister might point out anomalies, new schemes and goodies to benefit specific groups.
The problem arises when the speech is all that people use as a basis to assess the value of the budget's various allocations. In order to truly have an accurate representation of the budget, one would need to carefully scour through the extremely thick, heavy document named "Estimates of Federal Government Expenditure", or "Anggaran Perbelanjaan Persekutuan".
But how many people would have the time or energy to do this unless it is part of their jobs to analyse the budget?"
"At a conference last week on the Open Government Partnership, various speakers shared about how countries around the world including the UK, the Philippines and Indonesia – that have all signed up to this voluntary partnership that brings government and civil society together – are introducing amazing tools to first, improve public service efficiency and second, improve governance via transparency.
Open data is one such way to get there. Our government already has an open data initiative, currently being implemented by government agencies Mampu and MDEC, where selected open data sets are shared for free access at www.data.gov.my (open meaning they are publicly accessible, machine-readable and reusable).
But there is a mismatch here – where one arm of government attempts openness and transparency whilst another is deliberately vague.
One thing is clear: Anyone analysing the government budget cannot and must not restrict oneself to the budget speech alone; verifying whatever has been stated in the speech by cross-examining the actual federal government expenditure document is crucial.
To that end, a more detailed breakdown of allocations is needed in place of general aggregated amounts. This would allow people to verify whether what is announced is really being allocated funds, and in the following year, check that the funds were actually used for the purpose."
Rest of article in The Sun:
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