Over the past decade Austria has undertaken a carefully-considered and ambitious series of modern budgeting reforms. Evaluation of the budget reforms was purposely built into the reform process. The budget law provides for an external evaluation no later than 2017. To meet these obligations,...

During the last two decades, France introduced a series of far-reaching reforms intended to bring about greater transparency towards Parliament, autonomy and flexibility to public managers, and rigor in to fiscal policy making.

Over the past decades, leaders and citizens in many countries have lamented the lack of transparency in government and declining citizens’trust in government. South Korea is not an exception. In order to restore trust in government, the Korean government has made considerable efforts to adopt...

This article describes the changes that have taken place in the work of the Budget Office of the central government as a consequence of the transition from the traditional budget process, often referred to as “incremental budgeting”, to top-down budgeting. This transition has taken place in...

The Republic of Kazakhstan is the largest economy in central Asia, and one of the fastest growing in the region. Having benefited from oil wealth as well as a diversifying and liberalised economy, Kazakhstan envisages a progressive modernisation of the political, administrative and juridical...

Uruguay is the only country in the world which has a five-year budget. A budget is prepared by each new government taking office and voted within 6 months of its swearing in, for the whole five-year government term. Each year, an annual revision (“budget update”) takes place, where the...

This case study represents the first in a planned series of studies on the ‘The Role of Evidence Informed Policy Making in Delivering in Performance’. The case study is based on both interviews with key stakeholders and desk research. It focuses on the social investment approach in New...

Kazakhstan has put in place a well-structured legal and institutional framework for preparing Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) at both the national and regional levels. The government has prioritised PPPs as a delivery mode for both economic and social infrastructure. The central emphasis on...

Federal retirement programmes and some federal insurance programmes have long-term effects on the budget. But the federal budget process typically uses cash-based accounting measures that cover a 10-year period, which may be too short to accurately report those programmes’ net budgetary...