Defending Dignity A Manual for National Human Rights Institutions on Monitoring Economic, Social and Cultural Rights UPDATE FROM AHN Ahn reviews the Auditor General’s annual financial audit reports and notices that the health sector budget is often underspent. In fact, for the past three years, on average only 65% of the Health Ministry’s recurrent budget was spent and only 80% of its development budget was spent. Over the course of her study she has developed a cooperative working relationship with the Health Ministry. So she proposes doing a public expenditure tracking exercise with a sample of municipal hospitals to see where some of the leakages and bottlenecks in resource distribution might be. She does a rapid data assessment to see what information she can get from the hospitals, as well as from the Health Ministry at the national, state and municipal level. She finds that quarterly financial disbursements are released to municipalities very late, while statements of expenditure from the municipal hospitals are returned even later. These delays on both sides have made it difficult to utilize the money for its intended purpose, which in turn has led to wasteful spending. REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING This chapter is based on Our Money, Our Responsibility: A Citizens’ Guide to Monitoring Government Expenditures, published by the International Budget Partnership in 2008. The following references are also recommended for further reading: Hakikazi Catalyst, Follow the Money: A Resource Book for Trainers on Public Expenditure Tracking in Tanzania International Budget Partnership (2006), Expanding Collaboration Between Public Audit Institutions and Civil Society, Conference Report Open Knowledge Foundation, Open Spending Handbook, available at: http://community.openspending.org/resources/handbook/ World Bank, Public Expenditure Tracking and Facility Surveys: a general note on methodology World Bank, Community Scorecard Process: A Short Note on the General Methodology for Implementation World Bank (2002), Survey Tools for Assessing Service Delivery UNICEF, Public Expenditure Tracking Survey Manual: A social audit tool to monitor the progress of Viet Nam’s Social and Economic Development Plan 128