The primary cause of corruption and one of the biggest problems of the Ukrainian authority is its closed nature. Most of the information on how the taxpayers’ money is used is not published anywhere, which creates room for manipulation.
In order to solve this problem, the Eidos Centre experts have drafted a law “On the Open Use of Public Funds”. The law required creating an exclusive web-portal that would incorporate all the data concerning state and local budget spendings, as well as expenditures of state and municipal enterprises, special foundations etc.
The draft law was developed by the Centre experts back in the spring of 2013. It was introduced to the Verkhovna Rada in May, 2013. In June, 2014 the law was adopted in the first reading and only on February 11, 2015 was it adopted in the second reading and as a whole. It happened despite a huge pushback from some political groups. A large-scale advocacy campaign run by the Centre for two years made the adoption of this law possible.
Over that period of time, the Centre activists have organised dozens of street events and meetings with the deputies; have published more than fifty articles and columns on the subject matter of this law. Right before the voting in the Verkhovna Rada, every deputy received a selection of an infographic and explanatory materials concerning the law.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Prime Minister of Ukraine, signed a Decree approving a timeplan for the implementation of this law on March 23, 2015. From March through September 2015, the Eidos Centre experts were actively participating in the web-portal development.
On the 15th of September, the Ministry of Finance presented E-data.gov.ua, an exclusive web-portal for the use of public funds. It was developed according to the Law №0949 “On the Open Use of Public Funds”. Now financial transactions of the State Treasury bodies may already be seen on the portal. They are being updated in a nearly live mode. A transaction of a certain budget, institution or enterprise may be found with the National State Registry of Ukrainian Enterprises and Organizations (EDRPOU) or the name of organisation/institution.
The portal includes two main components: 1) “The Use of Public Funds” module with all the transactions of the State Treasury and reports on the use of public funds and; 2) “Transparent Budget” module with the information about transparency of budget procedures and with the tools for citizens to analyse and control the budget.
Nowadays, e-data.gov.ua portal has become a key tool for fighting corruption. With just a few clicks one can find the information on all the expenditures and payments of any state or municipal enterprise, local budget etc.
