KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTS

This document is based on materials and discussions at the December 2023 meeting of the OECD Senior Budget Officials from Central, Eastern, and South-eastern Europe (OECD SBO CESEE) and the PEMPAL Budget Community of Practice (BCOP) workshop on budget openness in cooperation with the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT).

PEMPAL IACOP member countries are very interested in digitalization of reporting and monitoring of internal audit and internal control activities. To meet this strong demand, the IACOP community and the resource team have developed an IT tool – the Digital Platform for Public Internal Control and Internal Audit Monitoring and Reporting.

Audit committees have existed in the private sector since the mid-1980s to support organizations, Boards of Directors and Supervisory Boards in their oversight responsibilities. They have recently become more common in the public sector, reflecting the demand for more effective internal audits and internal controls to support greater efficiency as, more than ever, authorities strive to meet their objectives.

Government budgets across the world are under increasing pressure amid the interlinked global crises, fiscal stress, and demands for more effective public services and more open budgeting.

The BCOP 2023 Annual Plenary Meeting, held in Ljubljana on March 22-24, 2023, examined the current trends and directions of different issues related to public spending effectiveness and accountability. This includes program and performance budgeting, budget openness, climate change responsive PFM, and PFM in the health sector.

The budgeting function is undergoing significant modernization in many countries globally. This was evident from the discussions and presentations in the meeting of the OECD SBO CESEE and the follow-up work-planning BCOP meeting held in October 2022 in Bucharest. This knowledge product summarizes the key discussions from these meetings to provide an outline of the common global developments and trends in budgeting, offering advice or food for thought for PEMPAL BCOP member countries.  

This knowledge product represents a brief general stocktaking and benchmarking report. Its objective is to briefly review the current practices in spending reviews in PEMPAL countries as of 2021, benchmark to the current practices in OECD countries, and to gain a better understanding of the design, implementation, and challenges.

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This is a knowledge product developed for the Program and Performance Budgeting Working Group (PPBWG) that operates within the Budget Community of Practice (BCOP). The Working Group decided to examine this topic because this country has the longest history and most spending reviews conducted over several decades.

This knowledge product provides a step-by-step overview of the spending review process in the Netherlands. It also takes a deeper dive into one specific case – the spending review on child support schemes.

This is a knowledge product developed for the Budget Literacy and Transparency Working Group (BLTWG) that operates within the Budget Community of Practice (BCOP).

This knowledge product provides good practices and recommendations for Ministries of Finances to improve budget clarity. The product presents a roadmap with 12 steps for achieving full and meaningful accessibility and understandability of budget documentation. Specific examples of good practices employed in different countries are also presented throughout the knowledge product.

This report aims to benchmark the treasury single account  and cash management practices within the PEMPAL community, to help to identify good peer practices and to promote treasury reforms in the member countries. The quantitative core of this paper is the result of the survey conducted among PEMPAL member countries in early 2021.

 

The note is not an official World Bank document and does not represent the official views of the World Bank.

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The note supplements a comprehensive paper “Optimizing the Unified Chart of Accounts Design: Tips for Public Financial Management Practitioners” published by the TCOP in 2020. This new note uses the example of the COVID-19 pandemic and takes forward the discussion on additional government reporting needs when existing classifications do not capture the required information.