When Budget Transparency Becomes the Language of Democracy — Public Oversight Alliance Shares at the 2025 Open Government Partnership (OGP) Summit: Using Technology to Implement Budget Oversight

As democratic backsliding continues around the world, the Open Government Partnership (OGP) has become a crucial platform connecting governments and civil society. Since its founding in 2011, OGP has brought over 70 countries, hundreds of cities, and civic organizations together to promote transparent governance, public participation, and anti-corruption accountability.

The biennial OGP Global Summit is one of the world's most influential open government events. Government officials, journalists, civic groups, and the tech community from around the world gather to share practical experiences in democratic innovation and seek common solutions to safeguard open values ​​in an era of resurgent authoritarianism and disinformation.

The 2025 summit was held in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, and Taiwanese civil society once again stepped onto the international stage.

On the afternoon of October 6th, Citizen Congress Watch (CCW) and Wikimedia Taiwan in collaboration with Open Net Korea and the Taiwanese civic technology community, g0v, co-hosted an independent information exchange session during the conference. The theme of the event was "Digital Democracy and Accountability: Open Government Challenges and Civic Tech Lessons from Taiwan and Korea."

Taiwanese refreshments were provided at the event, which attracted a lively atmosphere and engaged discussions among civil society representatives, digital democracy, and open government advocates from various countries.

Deputy Representative of the Chinese Representative Office in Spain, Zhang Zixin, also attended the event to share his perspective on the meeting and expressed his support for Taiwanese civil society's continued promotion of democratic and open values.

Frontline experiences of civil society amidst democratic unrest

Over the past year, two East Asian democracies—Taiwan and South Korea—have experienced shocks to both institutions and trust.

Taiwan experienced the Legislative Yuan reform controversy and the massive "Blue bird" protests in 2024, followed by the Legislative Yuan budget cuts in early 2025, reflecting deep societal concerns about transparency and accountability in parliamentary operations. Meanwhile, South Korea experienced martial law and political restructuring at the end of 2024, leaving political divisions and institutional fragility still yet to be fully repaired.

James Kan, deputy executive director of the Citizen Congress Watch, noted at the meeting that Taiwan's civil society has demonstrated strong resilience in the face of this wave of democratic stress tests. He stated, "When political confrontation polarizes society, transparency is the only starting point for rebuilding trust. Without open information, accountability is impossible."

From the Bluebird Movement to Budget Oversight: Putting Open Governance Into Practice – Citizen Congress Watch

At the Summit, Kan shared CCW’s recent, practical experience promoting an open parliament. He recalled that after the Bluebird Movement in 2024, public attention shifted to legislative procedures and checks and balances. However, the following year, during the Legislative Yuan’s budget review, large-scale cuts—totaling tens of billions of NTD—were made, affecting multiple departments, including defense, foreign affairs, culture, and social welfare. With the government and opposition each clinging to their own positions, the public struggled to understand what was really happening.

He noted, “The opposition claims it’s saving taxpayers money, while the ruling party warns the cuts will cripple national operations. But in reality, the Legislative Yuan’s budget information is extremely hard for ordinary citizens to access—and even harder to understand. This is the crux of our long-term efforts: to let citizens truly see how the Legislative Yuan operates.”

The CCW has long been involved in monitoring the Legislative Yuan’s budget. Since 2008, it has continuously tracked committee questioning and budget freezes, and established a system evaluating members of the legislature using more than 50 indicators. Over the past 15 years, the organization has mobilized volunteers to manually transcribe, organize, and compare thousands of PDF budget documents, creating one of Taiwan’s most comprehensive databases on private bills and budget actions.

This experience enabled CCW to quickly identify budget cuts and the political context during the early-2025 budget controversy, and to provide consulting support to the data-journalism outlet READr on a budget-proposal platform. Through this collaboration, READr transformed this complex information into open data and visualizations, allowing the public to search for budget changes by theme, department, or proposer.

"This collaboration allows us not only to monitor but also to educate society – citizens can make direct inquiries, and the government can no longer use technical opacity to cover up its decision-making process. This is a new starting point for democratic oversight," said Kan.

Korea’s Challenges and Resonance with Asian Civil Society

Professor K.S. Park of South Korea shared the difficulties faced in implementing open governance in South Korea. Although the government has launched an open data portal, a significant amount of data is still excluded under the pretext of "national security" or "personal information protection," resulting in a lack of transparency regarding public safety and judicial information. "When freedom of information laws are overused, society loses its ability to oversee government, and open government becomes a hollow shell," Park said.

He particularly praised Citizen Congress Watch's efforts in budget disclosure and parliamentary transparency, believing it to be a model for bottom-up civil society practice regarding open governance in Asia, stating "[Their] ability to transform budget data into accessible public information is highly inspiring, and I hope to bring it back to South Korea for promotion."

Professor Park also expressed his hope to establish closer exchanges and collaborations with CCW, particularly in the areas of "Citizen Technology Oversight of Parliament" and "Data Transparency." He emphasized, "Taiwan's experience shows us that openness is not just a government responsibility, but also an innovative practice of civil society. I hope to share more practical technology cases like this with Asian partners like South Korea and Taiwan in the future, making the legislative process more transparent and traceable across the region." His remarks resonated with participants from various countries, who all expressed their belief that Asian civil society is gradually moving from individual advocacy to collaboration, forming the embryo of a transnational network for the defense of democracy.

Cross-border Exchange: Inspirations from Nigeria to the Philippines

At the event, speakers from Nigeria and the Philippines shared their experience in open governance. In Nigeria, candidates sign an “Open Government Commitment” before elections, pledging to continue reforms if elected. In Baguio City, officials use the Public Project Monitoring System (PRiSM) to publish bidding and project-progress data—turning transparency into an anti-corruption tool and enabling real citizen oversight. These stories mirror experiences in Taiwan and South Korea, illustrating how civil society can shore up institutional trust through innovation and collaboration—even as democracy erodes elsewhere.

Advancing openness to safeguard the institutions of democracy

For CCW, open governance isn't just a policy initiative; it's a long-term project to repair democracy. Deputy Executive Director James Kan shared, "Although Taiwan isn't yet a formal member of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), we've chosen to embody its spirit through action. Starting in 2018, the OGP has assisted the Legislative Yuan in launching its first Open Parliament Action Plan, promoting transparency in bills, public disclosure of committee attendance, and voting. Even though the second phase of the plan has been suspended in the new Legislative Yuan, we continue to promote the citizen version of the action plan, ensuring that openness becomes the norm in the system."

This summit was not only a sharing of experiences but also a declaration of action by civil society in the face of the resurgence of authoritarianism. From the Blue Bird Movement to budget oversight, from data access to cross-border connections, the CCW has consistently upheld transparency and accountability as its core values, demonstrating the democratic resilience of citizen power in turbulent times.