Background

Informed participation of citizens has the ability to facilitate governments and taxpayers to get the best value out of scarce public resources. In this paper, we argue that when citizens have knowledge of their county’s resource envelope and how it has been distributed in in prior, current and projections for future years across various sectors and service areas, they are more likely to provide concrete and quality input towards aligning priorities to community needs in current and in the future years. We also argue that when citizens have detailed information about programs to be implemented or services to be delivered by their government, including their performance indicators and targets, they anticipate services and development thus, are likely to play civilian oversight by providing factual and timely feedback to the government regarding efficiency, accessibility and the quality of services delivered to them and finally, when information is publicly available, there is a minimal room for speculation hence improving the coherence in government – citizen relations and proactive engagement.