Ministry of Finance celebrates first anniversary of Law on open use of public funds

On February 11, the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine celebrated the first anniversary of the Law of Ukraine “On the open use of public funds”. During the meeting the first conclusions and further plans were discussed. The meeting was attended by deputy Minister of Finance, Chief of Staff Oksana Markarova, head of the “E-Data” project Oleksandr Shchelokov, head of the Center for Political Studies and Analysis Victor Taran and First deputy Chairman of the Parliament Andriy Parubiy.

Deputy Minister of Finance Oksana Markarova reminded that in September 2015 the official web portal on public spending “E-Data” was launched in accordance with the Law “On the open use of public funds”. Currently, the first E-Data module “Open Spending” is in operation – it contains data on the transactions of the State Treasury Office as well as reports of the managing entities and recipients of public funds.

“Currently, we are maintaining the most important part of E-Data, we publish reports of state-owned and municipal companies. At this stage we have identified problems which hamper smooth operation of the portal: lack of recording systems, Internet access etc.”, Oksana Markarova said.

The deputy Minister of Finance also informed that after the test operation of the portal which will be running till the end of June 2016, the lists of the low performers in terms of data release on ”E-Data” shall be published in order to enable the entitled authorities to impose sanctions on them.

The next stage of the project is the implementation of the second module – “Open Budget”. The concept of this module was approved by the Cabinet of Ministers on February 11. This system is aimed to completely automate the budget process and to exclude the human factor from it. The system “Open Budget” will enable everyone, starting from accountants, to participate directly in the budget process by sending budget requests.

The public part of the system will be launched in the test mode in August 2016 and should be completely integrated into “E-Data” portal in 2018.

During the meeting winners of the journalists’ E-Data investigations contest were awarded. This time 24 investigations from 11 regions of Ukraine were submitted to the jury. The first prize was given to Dmytro Gnap, a journalist at “Slidstvo.Info”, who presented his piece “Payroll time at the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine”, the second prize was awarded for the text of “Nashi Groshi” titled “Land magic of the wife of an investigation officer from the General Prosecutor’s Office” by Iryna Saliy, the third prize went to Oksana Pilyanska, a journalist at vikna.if, who presented her contribution “Company affiliated to the MP Igor Nasalyk is for the sixth time enjoying the most delicious part of the tender “pie”. According to organizers, this contest is going to take place every year.
The official web portal on public spending “E-Data” is available at http://spending.gov.ua/