Transparency – openness of the procedure of planning, creating and implementing state policies, and in particular transparency of planning and implementing public finance, is a key element of good governance. The budget is one of the most important documents, as a bond of all current government policies implemented due to its realization. Fiscal transparency is defined as timely and systematic disclosure of all relevant fiscal information.
ESE believes that transparency cannot be acquired but created. A state would achieve a high level of democratic governance the moment it truly completes the transition from a conservative to an open government allowing the citizens to be informed about the data related to what the state has been doing with money they invest in it. This would allow citizens to get informed about how and what their political representatives are actually doing, to understand the decisions they are making, to influence those decisions when they are endorsed, to participate in the decision making process, resulting in citizens gaining both trust in the government, as well as a feeling of being equal members of the society they live in.
Transparency and accountability should be features of any democratic state. Low level of transparency and accountability of state institutions encourages civil organizations, international institutions, experts and others to undertake activities and to initiate changes in past practices in the work of state institutions. In this direction, and as a result of the ever growing conservativeness and the ever declining level of transparency in the work of state institutions in the Republic of Macedonia, ESE has used different methods and techniques to assess the current situation and trends, including activities for enhancing and promoting the principles of fiscal transparency and practicing the right to information and participation in the work of public institutions, as well as urging them to respect those principles.
We do all of this by assessing the degree of respect for widely accepted principles of transparent working and publishing documents created in the process of implementation of the basic fiscal policies; we encourage transparent working of state institutions by regularly practicing the mechanism for free access to public information; we monitor activities undertaken by other states towards increasing their transparency in fiscal working; we monitor the development of the policy of Macedonia for transparency and we assess the degree of fulfillment of undertaken obligations for transparent working; we inform the public about the situation in this area in our country and about the rights of the citizens in this domain; we assess the degree of civil participation in the work of public institutions and we encourage citizens to demand involvement and to initiate changes of the method of work of public institutions; we are part of international movements for improving transparency and accountability in the processes led by governments and for increasing the scope of information related to their work available to the public; we continuously build our capacities and the capacities of other civil organizations.
We pay particular attention to the degree of transparency in the work of institutions in the Macedonian health system and all other institutions involved in different ways in the work of health institutions. We also pay attention to participation of citizens in the decision making processes and to budget processes at local level.
