BudgIT-Finance 4 Development Project BudgIT, is a civic tech organisation founded in 2011 to raise the standards of transparency and accountability in public finance. Since inception, the organisation has applied technology to meld citizen engagement and institutional improvement, with the aim of enabling societal change.

BudgIT employs a wide range of creative tools and the social media to simplify the budget and public expenditure for citizens, consequently raising standards of transparency and accountability in Government. BudgIT partners with civil
society organizations, public institutions and the media, mainly in the areas of fiscal analysis, civic technology and data presentation.

Our unique approach includes deploying data mining skill sets to creatively represent informationusing infographics and empower citizens to use the information to articulate their demands for service delivery. Furthering its advocacy to reach the hearts of the people in the grassroots is TRACKA - a project tracking tool that allows citizens monitor developmental projects in their communities. Created in 2014, this web and mobile platform is currently operational in 22 States (one field officer in each State), and bridges the communication gap between elected representatives and their people, thus ensuring the completion of projects at grassroots level. Through a series of workshops, regular publication of infographics and social media engagement, TRACKA has kept State and Local Governments on their toes in the past year, fast tracking service delivery, and aims to expand its thematic and geographical scope in the nearest future.

For three years, BudgIT has also led advocacy campaigns to achieve Nigeria#s membership on the global Open Partnership initiative. In 2016,Governance Nigeria formally joined the Open Government Partnership by sending a letter of intent to the OGP Global Secretariat. BudgIT was actively involved in the development of Nigeria#s first National Action Plan which is a strategy document with actionable commitments that Nigeria (civil society, government and private sector) will work on within a period of two (2) years. BudgIT is currently the secretariat of the Open Alliance - a coalition of over 100 civil society organisation working on the OGP in Nigeria. The Open Alliance hasbeen the forerunner of OGP in Nigeria from the days of advocacy for membership.

In partnership with the Nigeria Extractive Industries Initiative (NEITI) and Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), BudgIT recorded remarkable success in bringing attention to the extractives industry, particularly with the #FixOurOil campaign. The activity has further opened up the workings of the oil and gas sector, simultaneously unmasking various economic opportunities that lie in the solid minerals sector.

BudgIT will be implementing the inequality campaign aspect of the Nigeria F4D, inequality campaign is the fourthpillar of the Strategic Partnership intervention in Nigeria. The campaign has been ongoing in Nigeria since 2015 after the global launching inOctober 2014. It is understood generally as a manifestation of the pattern of resource distribution within a country. It reflects the pattern of access to decision making spaces, wealth accumulation, assets, income or general resource distribution etc. andalso looks at the differences in gender, race, power etc. Inequality can manifest in different forms such as political, economic and gender.
Among the core objectives of the intervention in Nigeria is to map out and understand the existing socio-cultural,economic and political factors and conditions driving poverty and inequality in the Nigeria, create awareness around them and identify keystrategic actions and actors needed to galvanize citizens and policy makers against inequality and set the terms for a debate on inequality in Nigeria.
To deliver the desired result, a combination of strategies will be employed, these include mobilizing citizens around the issue in Nigeria, organizing policy dialogue meetings, launching of the Nigeria Inequality Report, simplification of the inequality report into Booklets and Leaflets by using Infographs, publication of policy paper series on inequality in Nigeria, publicizing of the Nigeria Even it Up website, simplification of research findings on taxation, budgetetc into accessible information materials, dissemination of reports, use of both the traditional and the new media to create awareness around the issues of inequality,etc.
The following initiatives will be carried out by BudgIT.
I. "Initiating effortsto directly lobby the Legislature at different levels using tax data to engage and using media to influence legislation"
II. BudgIT will support partners in improving development of media schedule for Oxfam partners as well as engagement on social mediaof advocacy messages on specific thematic issues (based onsector and budget analysis) using the various research produced by other strategic partners.
III. Produce 100 Tracka reports meant to engage citizens on the issues of inequality in Nigeria
IV. Produces 40 infographics and 2 multimedia projects based on data generated showing the dimension and percentage of allocation to pro-poor sectors, capital allocation versus overhead, gender responsiveness of the budget, dimension of inequality in allocation etc.