As it is not always easy to determine whether a budget document is published on the official websites of counties, cities and municipalities, the level of transparency was measured according to the following criteria:

• Budget proposal – if a document bearing this title is published on a local government unit's website, either as a 'draft budget proposal', or as part of materials for a meeting, or if there is a clearly stated direct link to a website containing that document.
• Enacted budget – if published on a local government unit’swebsite or if there is a clearly stated direct link to a website containing that document. If published in a local government unit’s official gazette, it is deemed to be published only if there is a clearly stated direct link (e.g. ‘the 2017 budget’) on the local government unit’s website to this particular document, or the official gazette in which it can be found. Otherwise, the document is not deemed to be published on the local government unit’s website. Such a decision was taken in response to frequently inadequate searchability of official gazettes.
• Mid-year and year-end reports – if published on a local government unit’s website under those titles, or as proposals for (drafts of) mid-year/year-end budget reports, as part of materials for a meeting, or if there is a clearly stated direct link to the websites containing such documents. If published in a local government unit’s official gazette, they are deemed to be published only if there is a clearly stated direct link (e.g. ‘the 2016mid-year report’) on the local government unit’s website to these particular documents, or the official gazette in which they can be found.
• Citizens budget – if any kind of simplified budget documents, intended for citizens, has been published on a local government unit’s website (e.g. budgets in a nutshell, presentations, guides or brochures), or if there is a clearly stated directlink to the websites containing such documents.

The publication of the 2015 year-end and 2016 mid-year reports was examined from 2 November to 22 December 2016, and the publication of the 2017 budget proposal, 2017 enacted budget and 2017 citizens budget from 1 February to 26 March 2017.

The analysis underlying this map only includes documents that were available on the local units’ websites on the day of their examination.
 
The subsequently published documents are deemed unpublished. The observed periods for local units have already been generous, as the websites were assessed well after the dates when the budget documents had been required to be produced. Timeliness is an essential feature of budget transparency, because without timely information citizens can not be informed in the right moment or participate in budget processes.

With a view to increasing budget transparency, the Ministry of Finance has recommended to local units that the following budget documents should be published on their official websites:

• budget proposal - when submitted to the representative body by the executive body (by 15 November of a current year);
• enacted budget - when passed by the representative body (by the end of a current year);
• draft year-end report - when submitted to the representative body by the executive body (by 1 June of a current year for the previous year);
• draft mid-year report - when submitted to the representative body by the executive body (by 15 September of a current year); and
• citizens budget accompanying the budget proposal (by 15 November of a current year).

Dear visitors and journalists, here you can get all the materials related to the presentation of the local units' budget transparency results: November 2016 - March 2017.

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Statical map of local units

Institute of Public Finance regularly analyzes the budget transparency of counties, cities and municipalities measured by the number of key budget documents published on their official websites. Archive of past researches is available here.

Presentation of this research is supported by: