From LUSUDI perspective, citizen participation in the planning and budgeting process represents downward accountability and it is critical key in ensuring that resources are allocated to critical areas, enhances good governance, eliminates corruption, and ultimately improves service delivery Citizen’s participation is enshrined in the Uganda Constitution Article 38(1) that requires any Ugandan to participate in the affairs of government individually or through a representative. Despite this however, in the 2019 Open Budget Survey (OBS) Uganda score reduced by 2 points from 60% in 2017 to 58 % in 2019. This was mainly attributed to the decline in the level of public participation in the budget process from 28% in 2017 to 22% in 2019, reduction in the level of budget oversight from 63% to 59%, and the reduction in the level of comprehensiveness of some budget documents produced, particularly the Mid-Year reports. To improve citizen participation in the planning ad budget processes across the district, LUSUDI undertook several interventions at sub national level.

To amplify citizens’ voices in service delivery and spending priorities at local government level, CSBAG mobilized citizens to participate in community dialogue and interface meetings. The meetings also doubled as accountability forums whereby citizens had an opportunity to directly interact with their leaders on key service delivery issues that needed to be addressed. A total of 5 community dialogue and interface meetings were organized in sub-counties of Bubare, Nyamweru, Ruhija, Muko and Hamurwa Town Council. As results of these interface meetings, citizens were able to get commitments from duty bearers which has led to an improvement in service delivery.

Following the COVID-19 outbreak that resulted in closure of 73,240 education institutions across the country affecting over 15 million learners,15 the Government developed home learning materials and partnered with various radios and national televisions to broadcast lessons. There was public outcry on the progress of distribution of the learning materials and accessibility of the radios and national televisions to broadcast lessons. LUSUDI in partnership with CSBAG used their existing community groups to track the progress and the implementation guidelines for the National Inclusive Education policy. Among the actions to be implemented in 2021 by the Equity and inclusion Thematic Group is an analysis of the inclusiveness of the Education Sector budget where CSBAG was nominated to take the lead.

To keep LUSUDI functioning and engaging Government during and after the lock-down, LUSUDI had to maintain its capacity building and improvement in staff performance Among actions that LUSUDI undertook to strengthen its collaborations include;

• Joint lobbying and advocacy to influence national level policy and subnational level budget implementation and service delivery monitoring.

• Enhancing the Staff and community Monitors capacities in budget analysis.

• Lobbying, advocacy and influencing.

• Maintaining the old collaborations and partnerships with Government MDA’s.

• Creating new linkages and platforms for budget advocacy.