Is this the dawn of openness?

For those of us with easy access to the Internet, we tend to take such access for granted. Recently,the government of President Zuma has been in the news for a number of reasons but specifically for his recent State of the Union Address as well as the national budget speech, presented by Minister Pravin Gordhan. Having access to the Internet meant that it was easy for me to simply visit the government’s website and access both President Zuma and Minister Gordhan’s speeches and delve into the detail at my leisure. But for the many millions of South Africans who do not have Internet access and who for one reason or another would have missed the live broadcast of these speeches, they would have to rely and trust on the many media commentaries that followed the delivery of such speeches. It was rather refreshing therefore to see that lately some of the Provincial Finance Departments have been publishing the details of their budget (as paid-for-advertising -see pic above) in the print media. A recent example is Gauteng’s Department of Finance which published an easy to read illustration of the provincial budget. Indeed, it could be argued whether or not the details of the provincial budget has any impact on the day-to-day existence of an average citizen however, I believe the gesture is more significant in that it seems to pint towards an attitude of increased openness on the part of government. Whatever the reasons, I have no doubt that those far flung members of the electorate will find themselves better informed about how government intends to spend their taxes. It is my hope (and I challenge government on this) that come the end of this fiscal year, the provinces  and government in general will be more willing to divulge the details of how the budget was spent relative to the promises made as this would be a true measure of government’s openness.