Subject government spending to open and transparent accounting
A lot of government spending is dished out without being subject to rigorous testing for what the benefits or costs will be, and whether there will be a positive rate of return on the policy, programme or initiative.This is allowed to carry on because there is little to no transparency for government accounting, and thus large amounts of spending is simply wasted on projects with terrible rates of return that would not be acceptable in the private sector. Indeed, many policies are simply the hobby horse of a minister or carried out so that the minister or a department can be seen to be "doing something".
I propose that for major government spending initiatives - for example over £5 million - that the government accounting should be published and full open and transparent. This would include the ex-ante cost benefit analysis and the ex-post evaluation of the project. This would provide greater accountability for the government and reduce "pork barrel" spending.
written by stephenfrekel 514 days ago
This makes perfect sense. The fact that this is not done already is amazing. The government takes up over 40% of GDP and there is no proper evidence of whether it is well spent?