BTAP-Promoting transparency and particip From March 2015 to March 2018, with the support of EU and Oxfam, the Budget Transparency Coalition (BTAP) has successfully implemented the project "Promoting transparency and people#s participation in state budget management #. After 3 years of implementation, the project has achieved great results such as some information publicity policies have improved to some extends; Local authorities inHoa Binh and Quang Tri have applied the mechanisms for community involvement in monitoring, and community groups#members have become a positive factor in motivating people to participate in budget monitoring. From April to December 2018, Oxfam continues to support BTAP in replicating the project#s successful lessons to influence at larger-scale.

Regarding supporting people#s participation, until December 2018, 11 core groups have been established (9 groups in Quang Tri and 2 groups in Hoa Binh). New groups# capacity in budget monitoring, analysing, and public investment monitoring has been built through various activities such as trainings and experience sharings. In these activities, older groups have played an active role in guiding and supporting new groups in budget monitoring. With the mechanism in which older groups supporting the new ones, BTAP expects thecommunity monitoring model to be spread naturally and sustainably. In the coming time, BTAP will continue to support the spreading process through initiative funds, sharing experiences in budget monitoring by organizing sharing sessions between old and new groups, or sharing in periodical meeting with Quang Tri provincial Women#s Union, Farmers Association of Hoa Binh province, Hoa Binh provincial Fatherland Front and through social media.In addition, the "People monitoring budget" group will be established on Facebook to create a forum for all residents to approach, share experiences and concerns relating to budget monitoring. Via the open forum above, BTAP will promote learning sharing and technical support for people#s participation in budget monitoring.

Regarding governmental support to expand the space for people#s participationin in decision making and monitoring budget implementation, the authorities in Hoa Binh and Quang Tri provinces have developed mechanisms such as the Scoring tools to select public investment projects, Social audit tools to assess the quality of public investment projects, Policy consultations, Community consultation mechanism to manage development budget of commune. Moreover, the People's Councils at all levels in the project area have also improved the effectiveness of policy implementation monitoring. In addition, the opportunity for people to comment and the accountability of People's Committees at all levels have been enhanced through policy dialogues. In the periodfrom April to December 2018, a total of 21 initiatives (11 initiatives were implemented in new districts and new communes) relating to the evaluation of public investment projects, policy dialogues and analysis have been carried out in Hoa Binh and QuangTriprovince. In the 2019-2020 period, BTAP continues to support governments in Hoa Binh and Quang Tri to implement a number of key policy initiatives to create more evidences for central-level policy advocacy. Thus, BTAP will support Mai Chau district People's Council to apply Scoring public investment tools and assist People's Council of Quang Tri province  evaluate the collective economic program.

Regarding promoting social dialogues on budget management, under the revised 2015 State Budget Law, the Government and People's Committees at all levels must publicize their budget estimation before getting approval from the National Assembly or People's Councils. During the reviewing period by the National Assembly and People's Councils, BTAP promotes publicdiscussionand people#s comment on the budget estimation. "2019 State budget estimation from expert perspective" seminar was held in Hanoi on October 29, 2018 with a total of 54 direct participants and 25,800 online viewers. There are more than 5,000peopleparticipating in the discussion, learning about the 2019 State budget estimation via website ngansachvietnam.vn and the Vietnam Budget fanpage. Opinions of experts and people on the 2019 State budget estimation were summarized by BTAP and sent to NationalAssembly deputies, the Ministry of Finance, and the Finance and Budget Committee of the National Assembly. MOF#s representative proposed a meeting with BTAP toexplain the contents of  recommendations relating to the 2019 State Budget Estimation.

Regarding monitoring the implementation of budget transparency policy, BTAP has applied the POBI initiative to assess the level of compliance of provincial authorities and MOBI initiative to assess the level of publicity of central agencies for regulationsrelated to budget transparency. The results of the survey were used by the Ministry of Finance to implement numerous strong actions to promote budget disclosure under the 2015 Budget Law. However, the survey only focused on 3 aspects of publicity (i) availability; (ii) timeliness; (iii) the adequacy of the budget documents but have not yet evaluated the quality, usefulness and participation. Therefore, BTAP proposes that these two surveys needto be completed in terms of evaluation criteria and are carried out annually to create a reliable tool promoting information publicity at the local level.

In 2017 and 2018, Oxfam have also supported BTAP to implement a project improving the role of commune health centers to enhance the quality of health servicesforthe poor, women and ethnic minorities in Quang Tri. The project has piloted the result-based financing model (RBF model) at 6 health centers. Although having just been implemented, RBF model has made some initial impacts to improve service delivery qualityof health centers. RBF activities have facilitated community participation in quality assessment/ service delivery scoring of health centers. Based on this assessment, health centers# budget utilization is improved. However, RBF has just beenpiloted ina short period of time, the evidence and policy messages relating to the allocation of grassroots health budgets based on the operation results are stil unclear. Therefore, BTAP suggests that the implementation of RBF in Quang Trineed more time.

Budget isone of the most important content of economic and social management. If managed in a transparent manner, ensuring accountability and efficiency, budget expenditure plays an important role in poverty reduction, social and economic development. Therefore, BTAP will continue to promote transparency and efficiency in budget management with a comprehensive approach from policy improvement, policy implementation monitoring and community participation support. With the above analysis, BTAP proposes tocontinueimplementing the next phase of the project "Promoting transparency and the people#s participation in state budget management #Expanding period# with the aim of maintaining budget management initiatives, broadening the scope of their impact, andmovingtowardsadvocating institulization into policy solutions for more widespread adoption.