January 31, 2017, by Arjan El Fassed

Open State Foundation is a non-profit based in the Netherlands, working on digital transparency by opening up public information as open data and making it accessible for re-use. Last December, the organization received one of the seven Open Government Partnership 2016 Awards for its work on OpenSpending at the OGP Global Summit in Paris, France. The awards celebrated civil society initiatives that are using government data to bring concrete benefits. This blog post describes Open State Foundation’s work on advancing fiscal transparency through OpenSpending.

The financial crisis and various budget cuts in the Netherlands caused more than ever before the need for citizens to gain real-time access to financial data of all local and regional governments. Civil servants, journalists and citizens alike need data on budgets and spending to hold their own local governments to account.

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