Open Government Partnership New Zealand National Action Plan 2016-2018
Date: December to February 2018
Commitment 1 progress report: December 2017 to February 2018
Commitment 1: Open Budget
Lead agency: The Treasury
To promote public discussion/debate and participation through accessibility of the Budget and include relevant groups outside of government in the formative phase of the Budget, ensuring they are informed about the process and issues.
Milestones
Milestone 1
Ask key stakeholder groups how the Budget could be made more accessible
Progress: completed
Milestone 2
Invite feedback on the previous Budget – this means making it available in forms people can engage with, which could include machine readable data, plain English published material and visual presentations
End date: May 2018
Progress: underway
Milestone 3
Provide Budget data in machine readable form – this could include open source formats
End date: May 2018
Progress: underway
Milestone 4
Work with agencies that have expertise in presenting Budget data in ways that make it easy to understand
End date: May 2018
Progress: underway
What have we been doing?
Data
The Treasury is working on releasing Core Crown expenditure information for Budget 2018 in an open data format.
The Treasury has agreed on a process for determining where licensing information needs to be in the data file.
Budget 2018 Design
Increased use of table of contents, figures, page references, tabs, and hyperlinks within and across key Budget documents published on Treasury’s website.
What’s next?
Data
- Core Crown expenditure information will be released in an open data format to a limited set of stakeholders for feedback, with a full release before Budget 2018.
- It is intended that, over time, further fiscal data (e.g. tax revenue, balance sheet) will be released in open data format.
- Consideration is being given to how promote the Treasury’s open Budget data on the data.govt.nz platform.
Budget 2018 Design
- Provide targeted, bite size pieces of information (e.g. social media snippets), with links to more detailed information.
- Greater use of booklets and foldouts on particular Budget packages will be developed to better communicate Budget decisions.
- Publish a diagram on the Treasury’s website outlining the budget process and broad timeline.
- Publish a roadmap on the Treasury’s website on how to use the Budget publications and what each publication provides.