Public financial management (PFM) is an impactful means to achieve broader development objectives, such as state building, macroeconomic stability, and efficient and effective resource allocation and service delivery, by establishing and strengthening country systems for budget discipline and resource allocations and promoting technical efficiency in government spending (Beschel at al. 2018; Mustapha et al. 2019). Fiscal transparency is an integral foundation for government transparency and accountability as recognized by various directives and principles (e.g., GIFT High Level Principles on Fiscal Transparency, Participation, and Accountability, OECD Principles of Budgetary Governance, IMF's Fiscal Transparency Code, PEFA 2016 Framework). Experience shows, however, that disclosure is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for accountability (Petrie 2017). Attention has recently moved to translating public disclosure into more effective accountability by means of greater public engagement on PFM. The proposed pilot intends to prevent corruption through transparency of government finance data, accountability, and participation of citizens.

In Bangladesh, the World Bank supports the Government of Bangladesh's (GoB) efforts to strengthening public expenditure management. It aims to improve public financial systems and management of expenditure and stimulate public awareness and attention to better PFM for effective service delivery. The GoB for example has established the integrated budget and accounting system (iBAS++) which contains a detailed database of expenditure data and the Integrated Service Delivery Reporting (ISDR) for financial and non-financial information on service delivery. These data could potentially be released to the public to improve fiscal transparency for greater government responsiveness and accountability. Despite the proactive disclosure requirements in the 2009 Right to Information (RTI) Act and the 2009 Public Money and Budget Management Act, compliance is low in providing information related to budget allocation and outturns on Ministries/Divisions websites.

In support of the GoB's endeavor for fiscal transparency, the World Bank in partnership with the GoB conducts the Bangladesh Open Data Readiness Assessment (BODRA) for key public finance datasets and establishes a Public Financial Portal (PFP), a platform where finance datasets are made open. BODRA provides a great opportunity to assess the status of existing finance datasets and generate an action plan for GoB to implement open data. The 2014 Bank report recognizes that much of the publicly available finance data in Bangladesh are not considered "open" as the data format does not support re-use, there is no easy-to-use platform for accessing and comparing data, and there is no clear policy on the frequency of finance data disclosure. BODRA and establishment of PFP are opportunities to advance Bangladesh's "open" data that allows re-use and re-distribution.

Transparency itself does not automatically lead to accountability or anti-corruption. Finance datasets that are made "open" need to be analyzed and "translated" in the way ordinary citizens can understand (re-use). Then the understandable information needs to be widely shared and discussed for informed decision-making by the decision-makers and citizens. Corresponding to the BODRA efforts, therefore, the proposed activity plans to support the GoB to establish a pilot interactive portal on primary education data that allows users to go beyond transparency toward government responsiveness and accountability. The proposed pilot intends to support the GoB to experience the full fiscal transparency feedback loop for accountability: fiscal transparency through open data of the education sector, analysis and simplification of data (citizens budget), and dissemination of and government-citizen interactions around the budget information. The platform thereby intends to serve as an interactive, evidence-based tool to identify existing corruption and misuse of public fund and carve future corruption in the education sector.

Wide dissemination of budget information and inclusive citizen engagement are essential for government responsiveness and accountability. To address the last mile engagement challenges beyond the Internet connectivity, critical budget and actual revenue/expenditure data supplemented by service delivery information will be displayed at the community level. Citizens budget—simplified budget information with infographics in Bangla language—will conspicuously displayed at district and union level. These will be made available on notice boards including with local level, district, and school notice boards in simplified formats. At the school level, Parents Teacher Association (PTA) meetings will be used to share and discuss the budget information.