Issues of transparency of budgets of state bodies and public participation in the decision making process as one of the priorities of the Commission on access to information

On November 6, 2019, a regular meeting of The Commission on access to information was held under the chairmanship of the Minister of information and social development Dauren Abayev.

The Commission meeting was attended by members of Parliament, representatives of Central state and local Executive bodies, non-governmental organizations and the expert community in the field of access to information.

At the meeting of the Commission, the issues of public participation in the processes of public discussion of draft normative legal acts on the portal "Open LA" (legalacts. egov.kz), as well as draft budgets on the Open budgets portal (budget.egov.kz).

Opening the meeting, the Minister noted the importance of the work of the Commission and introduced its new members-Deputy of the Senate of the Parliament Zhusip Nurtore and head of the National center for human rights Utebayeva Zere.

The first speaker was Olzhas Danabekov, Director of the legislation Department of the Ministry of justice, who spoke about the E-Zannama information system, as well as about the draft law on improving law-making.

Within the framework of this bill, it is planned to transfer the procedure for obtaining expert opinions of NCE "Atameken", expert and public councils on draft laws to the portal "Open LA". It is also assumed that the functionality will be provided for automatic notification of interested parties about the placement of the project on the portal. Thus, as noted by Olzhas Janabekov, the portal "Open LA" will be a common platform to discuss the draft NPA.

Also, at the meeting of the Commission, Director of the Department of digitalization and public services of the Ministry of Finance Yerkin Berkeshev made a report on the revision of the list of information published on the portal "Open budgets".

By the end of this year, the Ministry of Finance plans to integrate the portal "Open budgets" with the Integrated automated information system" E-MinFin", which contains data on budget execution, and by the end of 2020 – transfer to "Open budgets" information on the planned budget from the information system "State planning".

These measures will ensure the accuracy, timeliness and quality of data (excluding the human factor when entering manually), as well as the publication of data in machine-readable form.

At the same time, the Minister of information and social development noted the low level of involvement of the population in the process of discussing draft budget programs.

At the end of the meeting, the Deputy of the Senate of the Parliament N. Zhusip noted the importance of the Commission's work, noting that it plays an important role in establishing feedback with the population and ensuring transparency.

Following the meeting, the members of the Commission made recommendations.

Members of the Commission – Rahim Oshakbayev (Director of the "center for applied research "Talap") and Olga Didenko (lawyer of "Internews Kazakhstan") drew attention to the need to publish publicly the results of the state audit conducted by the Accounting Committee for control over the execution of the Republican budget.

Rahim oshakbayev also called on representatives of the Ministry of Finance to work closely with non-governmental organizations, as well as to make the budget approval stage more transparent.

According to the decision of the Commission members, the next meeting of the Commission is scheduled for the first decade of December.