There’s a quiet revolution going on in Ukraine’s public finances.
A new website set up by the Finance Ministry allows anyone to monitor the Ukrainian authorities’ transactions with public money. Called Edata (spending.gov.ua), the website is operating in test mode just now, but will be up and running in full in June.
And it’s proving its worth already.
The investigative Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Gnap recently used the website to uncover the misuse of Hr 2 million ($76,400) in public money by the Prosecutor General Office.
Exploring the Edata profile of the Prosecutor General’s Office, the journalist came across some odd payments to three firms for servicing the office’s electrical network, and its heating and sewage systems. The companies were suspicious because there was no information about them on the Internet, and nobody answered the phone at the numbers they listed.
A subsequent investigation discovered that the “contractors” to which the Prosecutor General’s Office had paid public money were shell companies. Meanwhile, the public funds that were paid to them have disappeared.
Gnap told the Kyiv Post that without the Edata website, his investigation would have been a great deal more difficult. “Edata is like a cell phone,” he said. “Before cell phones appeared, people did indeed communicate, but now with cell phones it’s become a lot better.”
Previously, reporting of state spending was done by the state treasury. This body under the Finance Ministry control is tasked with overseeing transactions with public funds. But less information was provided and the misuse of money was harder to detect.
One of those behind the new website, Deputy Finance Minister Oksana Markarova, says the new website will cut down on both graft and waste.
“This is an electronic revolution,” Markarova said at a press conference on Feb.11. “It will not only reduce corruption, but will also lead to more efficient management of public funds.”
Around 23,400 recipients of state money had created profiles on the Edata website as of January, which is still only 30 percent of the total amount registered with the state treasury. However, the website is gaining popularity, with 50,000 people visiting it in January alone.
The government next plans to integrate the Edata site with the new e-procurement platform, ProZorro, in a project called OpenBudget. By the end of 2016, the platform will also unite the analytical systems and databases of the Finance Ministry, the treasury, the central bank, the State Fiscal Service and the Customs Service.
That would also be a revolutionary change, Markarova said. By gathering all such data together in one place, it will be much easier to analyze it, and time-consuming paperwork and information requests will be eliminated.
Other plans include training civil servants who work with public money to use the Edata system, and increasing the penalties for failing to disclose financial data – some companies, even state-owned ones, still find it less costly just to pay a fine rather than reveal all of their financial operations.
A report on Dmytro Gnap’s investigation (in Ukrainian) can be found here: http://www.hromadske.tv/politics/shchedrii-vechir-u-genprokuraturi/
Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Savchuk can be reached at [email protected]
