Often what a budget offers you is tough to decipher. But now citizens can know what has been allocated to their ward in the city budget.
Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy has broken down the city budget at the ward level in an accessible citizen-friendly format. Citizens can now check funds allocated to their ward, tenders issued, contracts awarded, job codes raised and bills paid for the particular ward on the “I Change My City” portal.
“We have analysed the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) budget, and a large cache of data of job codes, tenders, contracts and bill payments uploaded online. Most of this data is undecipherable, as it is uploaded as scanned PDF files and is pan-city level. This has been carefully broken down for ward specific allocations. The data doesn’t include funds and works of a regional nature spanning several wards, like stormwater drains,” said Sapna Karim, head, civic participation, Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy.
She added that the analysis was an extension of the MyCityMyBudget exercise that crowdsourced inputs in the run up to the civic budget.
Not just that, the portal has similar ward-wise data for the past two budgets, which also gives a comparison of funds the ward was allocated and progress of works taken up during this period.
The data, presented for the first time in an accessible format, will only help better and informed participation of citizens in ward committees, said Srinivas Alavilli of Citizens for Bengaluru.
In a first, the BBMP had uploaded ward-wise property tax collection and data of works taken up in February earlier this year, which was hailed as a major transparency measure. “Now, providing all data at the ward level in an accessible format will empower citizens to make informed interventions in ward committee meetings and also help them hold the administration accountable,” he said.