Project by Georgian State Audit Office wins int’l digital innovation award

The analytical web platform of the State Audit Office of Georgia - Budget Monitor – has been selected as one of the World Summit Award winners 2017 in the category of Government and Citizen Engagement.

The competition was organised by the World Summit Awards (WSA), an international platform for digital innovations with high impact on society.

Up to 400 projects from 180 UN member states participated in this year’s WSA contest in eight different categories, from which five winners were selected in the category Government and Citizen Engagement. Together with the Budget Monitor, projects from Austria, Portugal, India and Malaysia were awarded.

Budget Monitor was launched in March of 2017 by the State Audit Office of Georgia. The platform provides parliament and other stakeholders with constantly updated budgetary information and increases public awareness of budgetary process.

In its description of the project, WSA says that Budget Monitor is a unique citizen engagement web-platform, which provides comprehensive analytical information about the public finances, designed from auditor’s perspective. It presents key budgetary information in easy-to-interpret way using various data visualisation tools, thus rises public awareness about how budget money is spent.

"Budget Monitor is a two-way communication platform. On the one hand, it equips citizens with sufficient information for external public scrutiny and empowers their participation in government decision making. On the other hand, the platform enables them to engage constructively throughout the audit cycle”, WSA says.

By sending audit requests and proposals, citizens are able to inform the State Audit Office of Georgia (SAOG) about deficiencies in public spending. Thus, people can have profound impact on improving public finance management through their participation in SAOGs audit works and following up the government responses on audit recommendations.