Recently in one of forums, we had interesting discussions about monitoring fixed capital investments made by government. It is important to discuss the cost-efficiency of these investments because they usually account for 40% of Azerbaijan’s budget expenses. So the main question was asked: “what should we do to maintain public governance over these investments?”. This is a bilateral force driven action. The elected (supposedly) government officials should provide enough resources for better governance mechanism, so responsible citizens will have access to transparent information to make their judgement and to verify government’s effectiveness. The citizens should be responsible enough to react to every misappropriation that involves the government officials. They can use many different ways to deliver their reactions, but the more organized they are, the positive is the outcome.
The government may lose its legitimacy and will face accusations (true or false) if it does not ensure the transparency. To provide that Azerbaijani government officials should frankly discuss the impact of every investment made by budget/oil revenues. Almost all expenditures are supported by a presidential decree or refer to medium or long-term state programs. Announcements of these decrees are always associated with “noisy” media coverage. But there are several steps that government needs to take in order to enlighten the nation on the impact of public expenditures.
1. Qualitative/quantitative cost-benefit analysis of each project financed with budget/oil revenues. Before actual spending occurs, the government needs to explain the potential statistically significant socio-economic impact of every investment. Without knowing the impact of each project the citizens cannot identify that particular spending as required. In many cases, these projects should be open to public discussion. This can also be done through cooperation with independent research institutions, NGOs or local scholars. However, due to obvious reasons neither the parliament nor the cabinet of ministers currently provide this active discussion environment. Even the single reaction coming from a member of parliament to insufficient 2007 annual report given by the prime minister in Milli Majlis resulted in major problems to him. This fact shows that how the government is reluctant to discuss the results.
2. Create an online platform for each state program. Every state program should have its own website, either independently or coordinated with the related government agency. This website should give detailed information about the cost of project, any advancements and particular reasons for inflated costs. This will help the government avoid many accusations, if they are baseless. However, this will also make information about projects available to public, so people observe how the nation actually benefit from particular projects.
3. Cooperate with independent researchers or institutions to estimate the actual impact of each project implemented. This will give us a chance to see how the society benefits from each project and to what extent each project reaches to its goal. Again this will help government avoid baseless accusations, if any.
4. Objective criticism. The government officials should be willing to hear the objective assessment of projects and their implementation quality. This is more valuable than flattering praises decorated with nice words. Public opinion should be built upon actual qualitative/quantitative facts instead of being contaminated with fancy words.
5. Create databases to enable researchers conduct timely studies and discuss upcoming problems. For example, it is very hard to analyze the impact of recent financial crisis in Azerbaijan because of the lack of updated data in banking sector. The most updated publicly available data on individual banks goes back to August, 2008. Detailed databases will also make it possible to measure and examine the country from different aspects.
The opposite side of this governance process is the nation itself. The nation should be assured that their opinion matters. We should force the government to take some or all of the steps given above to raise public involvement. Government officials may not be willing to do so, but this will result in the lack of legitimacy and accountability or in increasing accusations. The government officials cannot argue back strong enough if they don’t provide a strong research-based assessment of projects. However, public itself needs to be more involved in the process of public expenditures evaluation and raise questions or demand answers to many opaque income transfers. How citizens should participate in this public governance process?
1. Show your interest and reaction, involve others. The public should raise its interest in the management of oil revenues through participation in organizations, such as revenue watch NGOs and others. Participation in discussions or in public surveys will also contribute to this process. Creating blogs, writing to newspapers or online forums are other means how the regular citizens can be involved in better governance. This will increase the public awareness of any misconduct caused by government officials.
2. Work with experts in related areas. Every responsible citizen should react to mismanagement but this will be effective if done in cooperation with experts. For example, legal rights can be protected with the help of experienced lawyers.
3. Public analysis of expenditures. Many NGOs and independent researchers have been analyzing government expenditures. They should continue to disseminate any facts of misappropriation of state income. They should engage more local scholars into investigating all aspects of national economy, as well as the impact of ongoing socio-economic reforms. State programs should be thoroughly examined by independent organizations in cooperation with local scholars.
4. Focus, call for action and reach to desired outcome. We know that discrete or sudden actions will not result in long-term impact. Continuous and focused investigations by calling related government agencies to action will be more helpful. Stakeholder (public) side of governance process should behave like a woodpecker until they reach the desired outcome.
All of these should not be limited with the better governance on just oil revenues, but in all aspects of our country’s transition period. These activities can be related to many areas from economy to social services and etc. Overall on public side it is always as Bob Marley says: Get up, Stand up, Don’t give up the fight!
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