Ahead of the annual budget tomorrow, National Treasury's online budget data portal, vulekamali, is now live.
Treasury developed the online budget portal to publish data in a user-friendly format to enable more effective information-sharing, analysis and research.
According to Treasury, it already publishes extensive budgetary information on its Web site; however, it has observed over time that the use of this data is not as extensive as it could be.
With the vulekamali portal, Treasury says it would like to encourage better use of budget data and foster a culture of active citizenry.
"The online portal will provide budget data in a format that is useful and appealing to the ordinary citizen and present an overview of how public resources are generated, allocated and used."
The project, which is a partnership initiative between Treasury and Imali Yethu, a coalition of civil society organisations, has been developed using a modularised approach to allow for continuous engagements with stakeholders.
Treasury has pointed out that the development process of the online portal involved extensive outreach to citizens to determine what they really want to know about the budget and in what format they find it most useful.
Ultimately, the department that manages national economic policy says it envisions a budget portal that will be a multimedia platform where many data-informed views on budgets can be posted and responded to.
There is currently only a Web version of the portal, but Treasury says it plans to launch an app at a later stage.
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