Community of Rozdilnyansky district demonstrated low budget transparency

The Stepanivka village council demonstrates radically low openness and makes it difficult to control local finances.

These are the conclusions of experts from the Center for Public Investigations.

According to their research, the village council's website leaves visitors with no chance of finding up-to-date data. The latest decisions date back to February 2022, the sections are empty, updates are irregular, and the search is limited. The experts could not find the decision on the budget for 2025.

In general, the review showed that among the 9 communities of Rozdilnyanskyi district, only three fully complied with the requirements of the law by providing access to the decision and annexes in the appropriate formats. Five communities published materials partially or in formats that do not meet the standards, and one council did not provide access to relevant documents at all. This difference creates a chaotic picture of the availability of budget information and significantly complicates the control over the activities of the authorities for residents.

Some councils, such as Novoborysivka village, Zakharivka and Zatyshany village councils, have shown that even with technical difficulties, it is possible to provide full access to the budget and its annexes for citizens.

The situation is somewhat more complicated in communities where budget decisions are formally available, but the format of presentation or lack of applications significantly complicates their use and machine processing.

The website of the Molohivka village council has a separate section for documents called "Documents" with a working search system. The budget resolution is available, but it is presented in the form of a scanned PDF, which makes data processing impossible and does not meet the requirements of the law.

The situation is similar for Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi city council: various documents, including budget resolutions, can be found in the 'Resolutions' section, but here they are saved only in scanned PDF format, which makes it impossible to read them machine-readable.

On the website of Kulevchany village council, the budget resolution along with its annexes is posted in the section'Official Documents'. However, it is consolidated into one large PDF file, which also does not allow for automatic data processing, in violation of the law. On the website of the Saratsky village council, the decision on the budget for 2025 is posted in the section 'Finance' in the subsection 'Budget'. However, the format is again limited to PDF, which does not meet the requirements of openness.

Кирило Бойко