On November 28, 2022, at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, our colleague Simona Prijaković presented the Institute of Public Finance's research project Does transparency pay-off? The political and socio-economic impacts of local government budget transparency in Croatia financed by the Croatian Science Foundation.

Budget transparency has become one of the key topics of contemporary research in the fields of political economy and public administration. In order for budget transparency to have a purpose it should encourage citizen participation and increase government accountability. Therefore, this project investigates the definition and importance of local budget transparency, presents our way of measuring it (OLBI - Open Local Budget Index), and analyzes the eight annual cycles of OLBI.

Prijaković pointed out that budget transparency of Croatian local governments is constantly improving, but also that the mere publication of key budget documents does not mean absolute transparency, but is the first step towards higher levels of budget transparency, education of citizens about budgets, their constructive participation in the budget process, and better citizen scrutiny and accountability of local units. "Budget transparency is not enough by itself, but its goal is to lead to greater participation of citizens, media, trade unions, politicians, scientists, etc. in the budget process," concluded Simona Prijaković.

The presentation was part of the international conference Open data challenges in times of crisis and growth which was held within the project TODO - Twinning Open Data Operational whose goal is to strengthen the interdisciplinary scientific excellence and research capacities of the University of Zagreb in the field of open data research that is, research based on open data in order to encourage the supply and use of open data by institutions in Croatia and beyond.