BudgIT Liberia developed a website for the Legislative Budget Office (LBO) to enhance budget transparency and provide institutional support to the government. A legislative act established the Legislative Budget Office on September 17, 2010, and its operations began in May 2011. The bicameral body is the Legislature’s nonpartisan professional technical arm. Its primary responsibility is to provide objective, impartial, and expert budget analyses.
BudgIT Liberia team and the country director for the BudgIT Foundation, Mr. Gabriel Okeowo, first met with a team from the Legislative BudgIT Office (LBO) to better understand the LBO’s operations as they related to the institution’s enumerated functions in December 2020. After the meeting, the two groups identified obstacles and opportunities and entered into a partnership agreement to address them.
The director of the Legislative Budget Office (LBO), the Honorable Moses T. Cooper, outlined several obstacles the institution faced, including the absence of a functional website to display public information or data about the national budgeting process. Due to the low cost of operations, he (Hon. Moses T. Cooper) requested BudgIT Liberia’s assistance in developing a functional website for their office to upload information and data about the national budget for public consumption.
At that meeting, they expressed a willingness to collaborate with BudgIT Liberia and other organizations to make the LBO a technically competent and well-capitalized institution for the benefit of Liberia. Considering the role of the Legislative Budget Office in promoting transparency and accountability with little or no information about the national budget available on the internet, BudgIt Liberia supported them with a functional website to enhance open budget systems in the country.
We believe that a functional website for LBO will enhance citizens’ access to the budget and encourage citizen participation in governance. We hope the LBO team will regularly update this website with new information to keep citizens engaged.
Mr. Gabriel Okeowo, country director for the BudgIT Foundation, made a brief virtual remark during the LBO website launch. “We are thrilled to present and hand over a functional website to the Legislative Budget Office (LBO). This initiative began in 2020 when I attended the launch of our COVID-19 Transparency and Accountability Project in Liberia. We introduced our work in Liberia with top government officials, including the director of the LBO, the Honorable Moses Cooper, who illustrated how a lack of a website restricts the LBO’s work. ”
After the website management and training session, the Director of LBO, the Honorable Moses T. Cooper, gave a closing remark to appreciate the entire team of BudgIT Liberia and shared a profound appreciation for the development team for their dedication to the project. ” Now we can post new public information and data on the website, and we look forward to more collaboration with BudgIT.”