The Open Budget Index (OBI) as a Comparative Statistical Tool

Since 2006 the International Budget Partnership (IBP) has conducted a biannual Open Budget Survey (OBS) to assess national budgets of around 90 countries in terms of their fiscal transparency. Responses from 92 of the 123 questions that constitute the Survey are used to construct the Open Budget Index (OBI) which ranks countries according to their budget openness. This article describes the OBS methodology in detail and explains how the Open Budget Index is constructed.