Building a Citizen Monitoring System on Budget Expenditure

Building a Citizen Monitoring System on Budget Expenditure

IMPLEMENTING PARTNER: PATTIRO
YEARS: 2009 – 2010
GRANT AMOUNT: $25,000
THEMES: Budget Monitoring; Education

Corruption in the education sector in Indonesia is becoming a more pressing issue given the substantial increase in public funds channeled into this sector, after the national constitution mandated an education budget of – at least – 20 percent of the national budget, starting from 2009. However, corruption and inefficiency in the education sector are significant and anti-corruption initiatives are few. Despite the increasing budget allocation for the education sector, students do not achieve desirable results; dropout rates and effective costs to students are high.

The program has been praised for the direct assistance it provides to schools and for improving participation rates. At the same time there have been growing allegations of misuse of funds. Greater accountability was in fact an important feature of a 2008 World Bank project supporting the BOS program that was financed with a loan of $600 million been recognized that reliance on official systems of accountability (government audits and so on) would not be sufficient and that there was a need for monitoring by civil society.

Project implementation started in May 2009 and was completed in January 2011. The project was implemented as a partnership between PATTIRO and the Bandung Institute of Governance Studies (BIGS); the project team consisted of two BIGS staff members based in Bandung. A project completion report was received on 14 January 2011. This project completion assessment was prepared following a visit to Jakarta in February 2011 during which discussions were held with key officials from PATTIRO and BIGS.

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