The team of the Transparent Cities project held the first workshop from the “Control Budgets, Monitor Procurement” series in Kharkiv on April 16-17.
Together with activists, journalists and active citizens, they talked about budgeting process at the local level and practical tools of its control, and also discussed public procurement monitoring tools.
The trainers, Mykola Orlov, expert of the For Transparent Local Budgets Partnership organization, and Illia Rybakov, expert of Civic Control CSO, helped to navigate this complex subject.
In the Budgeting Process section Mykola Orlov alongside with participants focused on ways of budget monitoring and engaging citizens in the budgeting process. Gender-oriented budgeting was also discussed,as well as online and offline possibilities of the community budget monitoring and the role that mass media play in this process.
In the Public Procurement Monitoring section, Illia Rybakov focused on Risk Analysis Tools in public procurement, he told about possibilities which the bi.prozorro.org system provides to activists and journalists, how to trace the movement of budget funds using spending.gov.ua and a lot of other useful information about how to work with CSV files, dozorro.org and search of connections – Google, Unified State Register, clarity-project.info, youcontrol.com.ua.
The participants also completed several practical exercises in which they attempted to make a plan of implementation of the local initiative from idea to reality, also they developed an example of what the local budget should look like on the website of the local council to be clear and understandable.
The participants of the workshop noted that it was a very interesting experience and they began to use the knowledge in practice right at the conference, searching connections – Google, Unified State Register, clarity-project.info, youcontrol.
Organizers, in turn, are waiting for results of the activists’ work in this field in the near future. This workshop is just a part of the educational process, after all, so participants have to do a little homework to strengthen the knowledge they got.
The project “Building Transparency in Ukrainian Cities” is implemented with the support of the UN Democracy Fund.
