The first phase of our Follow the Money work in Mexico was a real-time policy-support project that aimed to inform the implementation of Mexico’s Open Government commitments on open budgets and open data. To meet this goal we engaged in activities at both the federal and state level. We supported processes to assess – in a participatory manner, which builds capacity as well as generating evidence to inform policy – whether people were able to access the information that they would need to get a full picture of the flow of public resources in relation to specific priority issues. At the national level we developed the “Follow the Money Treasure Hunt” methodology and used it to hold a 2-day workshop where invited teams were challenged to see how successfully they are able to follow the money using data from government websites and other sources. At the state level, we built on efforts by the Instituto Nacional de Transparencia, Acceso a la Información y Protección de Datos Personales to promote local open government action plans by promoting the adoption of commitments to open fiscal governance and use our methodologyz to inspire and inform improvements in the production, release and use of data about the use of public resources and proving continued support for the implementation of those commitments. By June 2016, six states and two municipalities had made commitments to use the Treasure Hunts methodology in relation to specific sectoral issues.
(Spanish only report)