The latest preparations for launching the online simulation of Ukraine’s budget are underway. Thanks to this project, every Ukrainian can try to create their own country’s budget by adding or removing certain items of expenditure. “The idea is to give everyone the opportunity to feel the burden or, on the contrary, the happiness of governing the state, in order to give understanding of how hard it is to make a decision,” said Dmytro Boiarchuk, Executive Director of CASE Ukraine, at a presentation at Ukraine Crisis Media Center.
The online simulator contains ten major items of expenditure, which can be amended so that you change the country’s budget at your own discretion. Among them are expenditures on pensions, education, law and order, defense, social expenditures, etc. Also, there is an item of expenditures for civil servants. Dmytro Boiarchuk said that the online simulator provides an opportunity not only to select the number of officials but also define quality parameters – corrupt and ineffective or honest and professional civil servants. Once you create your own budget, each user can see what will be the results of the changes to the annual budget expenditure. If the user reduces the number of environmental expenditures, this will lead to environmental deterioration in Ukraine and even to the second Chornobyl, said Dmytro Boiarchuk.
Volodymyr Tarnay, Head of fiscal policies at Eidos Center, emphasized that an online simulator is a great tool for civic education. He advised the project developers to show users that this is not just a gamification tool, that it is based on deeper analytics. “I would suggest providing references to proof links and relevant studies while analyzing the policy alternatives. There is an extremely large number of NGOs and state institutions that analyze the theoretical consequences of making various decisions,” noted Mr. Tarnay.
Petro Bilyan, the editor of economic section at newspaper “Dilova Stolytsia,” suggested that the online simulator should be developed not only for ordinary Ukrainians, but also for people’s deputies and government. Mr. Bilyan is convinced that this will help politicians draft a budget and will reduce the level of manipulation of the population by the authorities.
The online simulator will start working in the coming days. You can leave your e-mail address on the website, then you will receive a notification of launch of the simulator of Ukraine’s budget.
