The Potential of BOLD in National Budget Planning: Opportunities and Challenges for Kosovo

• Published in: Electronic Government Vol. LNCS-12850; pp. 178 - 189
• Main Authors: Geci, Mentor, Csáki, Csaba
• Format: Book Chapter Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 2021
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Big data; Big Open Linked Data; Computer Science; Data quality; Humanities and Social Sciences; Library and information sciences; National budget planning; Open data; Big data; Data quality; National budget planning; Open data; Big Open Linked Data
• ISBN: 3030847888; 9783030847883
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-84789-0_13

Kosovo is a relatively new country with short history in terms of national budget planning. Budget preparation dates back to the year of 2000 when it was started under international support. Therefore, even now budget planning is done in line with international practices and standards. This implies exponential increase in the volume of budget data and at the same time resulted in a need for data openness and linking. This paper sheds some light on opportunities and challenges of using Big Open Linked Data (BOLD) in helping budgetary transparency of this developing country. In order to get insights about the status of using BOLD in national budget planning in Kosovo, interviews are conducted with public sector servants, covering different ministries and levels (from technical staff up to ministerial level). In addition, local NGOs are also contacted. This paper points out that the strategic approach developing countries are following in relation to the transparency of their BOLD open budget data and the attitude of public servants involved are more important determinants of future potentials than simple quantity or quality concerns in themselves.