Comunicación de datos presupuestarios de administraciones públicas mediante visualización: uso de la aplicación “Dónde van mis impuestos”

Abstract

Budget visualization tools facilitate the communication of complex technical information. In this paper, we analyse the main technical, individual and organizational factors that affect its implementation and use. Through a questionnaire survey we have collected data from those responsible for the web application “Dónde van mis impuestos” (“Where do my taxes go?”) in 23 Spanish regional and local governments. Our findings show that these tools have a small number of users but that their main target are not citizens but specific groups, mainly media and political groups. Its adoption is neither a budgetary nor technological problem, although the free software license gives clear advantages. The impulse for adoption is mainly political with the main focus on financial and budgetary transparency but sometimes also on participatory transparency or microtransparency. Finally, we detect a serious risk of governance generated by the lack of clear transparency and accountability strategies in the administrations, as well as an absence of operational procedures to adapt to the changing budgetary structure.