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The purpose of this paper is to apply Moore’s public value model into the context of e-government research by examining online financial transparency as both an organizational goal and as a driving force for financial sustainability and public officials’ corruption. The empirical context comprises the state governments in the USA.

Structural equation modeling is used to examine the relationship between specific contextual factors of the authorizing environment, financial sustainability, public official corruption and online budget transparency.

The results show that contextual factors like population explain online financial transparency, while financial sustainability and corruption had moderating and negative effects.

Governments that struggle with issues of financial sustainability and corruption will rely more on online financial transparency. Transparency increases detection of public corruption.

The effects of financial transparency and financial sustainability on corruption have been studied separately. This study fills the gap of understanding the effects of both on corruption as one phenomenon.

The New Zealand Government has progressively strengthened its balance sheet position since the mid-1990s, other than for the four years immediately following the global financial crisis and the Canterbury earthquakes. This paper describes the nature and the forecast and actual fiscal impacts of the COVID-19 response, and identifies the transparency mechanisms which reveal these impacts. It also expresses a viewpoint on the implications of the COVID-19 response for the future resilience of the Government's fiscal position.

The paper draws on the suite of official budgetary documents to demonstrate both the transparency of the disclosures on the COVID-19 impact and the substance of the forecast and actual fiscal impacts.

The paper reveals the change in the long-term fiscal aspirations of the New Zealand Government from one of achieving and maintaining a significant net worth buffer, to one which accommodates in the long-term a markedly smaller buffer and lower level of net worth.

The public financial management system in New Zealand is notable for its transparency. The Government's response to the pandemic is used to illustrate the nature and extent of that transparency.

In August 2015, the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) adopted Statement 77, requiring government disclosure in audited financial reports of a particular type of tax expenditure, tax abatements. GASB's reporting standards move tax abatements from a budgetary environment to an accounting environment. This paper evaluates GASB 77's provisions to encourage an early and on-going dialogue about the Statement's prospects for achieving greater transparency compared to existing tax expenditure reporting efforts. We conclude that GASB 77 will be most beneficial to consumers of financial information in medium and large jurisdictions where there is no alternative tax abatement disclosure platform, or where the alternative offers less transparency than what can be achieved through financial reporting.

This study investigates the transparency of budgets by examining its relationship with financial sustainability, which is a central area of research in the public-sector context.

Referring to the public value framework, a large sample of 110 countries has been investigated, implementing econometric models where the dependent variable is the Open Budget Index (OBI), published by the International Budget Partnership (IBP), and the test variables are different indicators of financial sustainability.

The results that emerge from the analysis suggest that budget transparency could be positively associated with the financial sustainability of governments, beyond the traditional aims of enhancing citizens' trust and participation.

This research offers important insights for policy areas, suggesting that improving budget transparency could be beneficial for public administrations because of the positive association with financial sustainability.

An attempt will be made to shed light on the course and pattern of the decentralization process by analyzing the historical development of local government and the territorial-administrative reform of 2015-2020 in Albania and the factors that have been shaping it. The scope is to understand the impact of the reform elements on the subnational governments and in general their overall impact on the government. The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap in the existing literature for Albania and at offering some insights on the administrative-territorial reform. Furthermore, it will contribute to the current debate on fiscal decentralization in South Eastern European (SEE) countries and the public management model implemented after the last reforms.

The first section analyzes the historical development of local government reforms from the 1990s to today and will help to identify if there is instrumentalism advocacy. The second section explains the determinants of the local government’s fiscal autonomy in Albania of the period from 2003 to 2016. Three indicators are used as proxies for fiscal decentralization: the proportion of subnational expenditure over national expenditure, of total subnational revenues over total revenues of central government and the indicator of own subnational revenues over total revenues of the central government. The data from the budget and the revised budgets are then compared.

Despite Albania’s commitment to decentralize its government functions, there is still work to do. The territorial and administrative reform has not generated the expected results. Almost 90 percent of the revenues still come from the central government’s unconditional transfers. Therefore, the Albanian Government should build capacities and skills, and train the employees of each level of government that currently benefit from international assistance.

The analysis represents a single case study on the territorial-administrative reform in Albania. Its implementation started in 2015 and it is probably too early to discuss outcomes. However, it might be useful to analyze the first results after a two-and-a-half-year period of implementation of reforms. Despite contributing to the existing gap in the literature, additional research will be necessary to better understand the decentralization process not only in Albania, but in all SEE countries.

It is necessary to first understand the lack of initial output, as well as the various challenges faced, in order to take the corrective measures on time.

This paper discusses in detail the reform adopted and the progress made by the Albanian local government units. The reform attempts to develop better relationships between the central and local governments and hence improve their service delivery, transparency and accountability. This paper is the first one that is attempting to analyze the initial output of the territorial-administrative reform of 2015-2020.

The objective of this study is to analyze the role that budgetary analytical capacity (BAC) plays for fiscal discipline in a sample of Eurozone countries in the postcrisis period.

Building on the policy capacity literature, an index for the BAC is constructed by including OECD budgetary data from three dimensions: reliability of projections, openness to legislative scrutiny and transparency. The proposed BAC index is validated by checking that larger values of the index are associated with the higher fiscal discipline scores across countries.

Controlling for the economic cycle, BAC index is positively associated with fiscal discipline. The association is stronger for the index as a whole than for the three separate dimensions.

The study is done on the limited sample of countries, and it is not feasible to validate results over time.

Budgetary policymakers can improve fiscal discipline by enhancing the three pillars that support the BAC.

Stronger BAC can help to improve the quality of public decision-making and overcome political opportunism.

This is the first study that introduces the concept of BAC, makes it operational and suggests its relevance for supporting fiscal discipline.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt an empirical examination of government budgeting and expenditure processes in Nigeria, a developing country. It examines the current state of budgeting and public funds management (PFM) in Nigeria. It also examines the extent to which the government has used the budgetary mechanism to effectively manage the nation’s economy.

The paper employed simple regression estimation technique for data analysis. Time series data set of budgetary information was constructed from different archival sources over a 16-years period (2000-2015), majorly the national Appropriation Acts, press releases, regulatory and governmental reports, reports of Transparency International, World Bank and Central Intelligence Agency.

The findings confirm that the nation’s annual budgeting approach is defective and lags in achieving its fiscal objectives. The budget indicates a state of poor accountability and transparency in PFM. Findings also suggest that the level of economic development in Nigeria is not commensurate with the size of government expenditure.

The paper draws the attention of the government to the need to restructure its approach to budgeting and adopt a more resilient approach that suits its environment and economic peculiarities in effort to ensure efficient management and accountability of public funds. The paper also offers value to other developing countries. It provides empirical evidence that explains an aspect why the African continent remains underdeveloped hitherto.

This paper lends a voice to the call for a restructuring of the Nigerian budgetary system and its implementation strategy. It advocates for the adoption of an alternative budgeting approach that matches Nigeria economic realities. The paper demonstrated that the traditional budgetary approach being used by many developing countries is limited in certain ways and could hinder sustainable development.