How to Use

Welcome to the Open Budgets India platform!

Open Budgets India (OBI) is an open data platform on government finances in India, which aims to facilitate easy and timely access to relevant data on Union and State Government budgets and budgets of Municipal Corporations. OBI is screen-reader accessible; more accessibility features will be added to the platform in the coming months. Check out a brief video explaining how you can use the platform.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The home page of the OBI portal is divided into eight segments, namely: the Header; the Search Bar; the Dashboards; Government-wise Budget Data; Key Features; Budget Basics; New Developments on Budget Transparency and Accountability; and the Footer. Each of these segments has a lot to offer, as explained below. 

 

Header

The header, on the home page, contains four different sections arranged from left to right as follows:

  1. OBI Platform
    1. How to Use
    2. FAQ
    3. About Us
  2. Dashboards
    1. Union Dashboards
    2. State Dashboards
    3. Schemes Dashboards
    4. District Dashboards
  3. Budget Datasets
    1. Government-wise Budget Data
    2. Sector-wise Budget Data
    3. All Datasets
  4. Budget Basics

The scrolling strip below the header lists five of newest additions to the platform. 

Search Bar

The search bar is meant to facilitate easy searchability of datasets or data-files available on the OBI portal, on the basis of keywords. For example, typing ‘education’ in the search bar helps find all education related data-files available on OBI.

 

Dashboards

OBI has a number of dashboards focusing on Union Government, State Governments and District level fiscal information. These dashboards are built upon machine-readable databases that have been created by the OBI team. Hence, the users can access a lot of relevant fiscal information – for the Union Government and select State Governments / District Treasuries – through these dashboards without having to worry about Budget Codes or Technicalities.   The OBI also has the Schemes Dashboard, which provides data tables, visualizations and other useful information related to a number of schemes. The homepage displays only the latest dashboards; all dashboards available on the OBI can be accessed using the “View All’ option. The dashboards available on the homepage, at present, include:

  1. Union Budget Explorer 2021-22
  2. Schemes Dashboard
  3. Himachal Pradesh Fiscal Data Explorer
  4. Union Budget Explorer 2020-21
  5. Assam Budget Explorer 2020-21

 

Government-wise Budget Data

OBI portal has a lot of useful documents and datasets on – combined receipts and expenditure by the Union and State Governments; receipts and expenditure by the Union Government; and those by nearly all State Governments. It also has such data for close to 60 Municipal Corporations and a few Districts. All of these are downloadable for free and reusable.

 

  1. Combined Budget (Union & State)
  2. Union Budget
  3. State Budgets
  4. District Treasury Flows
  5. Municipal Corporation Budgets

 

Key Features

This section explains the three key features of the platform. Tehey are

  1. Budget Documents
  2. Machine Readable Datasets
  3. Data Visualisations

 

Budget Basics

This section explains in an easy to understand language, the fundamental concepts and definitions related to budgets and the budgetary processes for different tiers of government in India. It also has Short Videos covering various aspects of government budgets in the country.

 

New Developments on Budget Transparency and Accountability

This section highlights some of the new developments in the field of budget transparency and accountability.

 

Other important features

OBI enables users to view, download and share datasets. The format of each dataset is mentioned below the title of the dataset. A number of such datasets have been included on the platform in more than one format (e.g., PDF, CSV, Excel and JSON) and each of these can be accessed by clicking on the respective icons. 

Also, a dataset can be both viewed and downloaded from its respective page by clicking on the ‘Download’ button and the ‘Explore’ buttons respectively. The ‘Explore’ button in turn provides the option of ‘Preview’ for a dataset.

The datasets can be shared by using the social media channels like Twitter and Facebook. Separate icons for these have been provided on the left-panel of all pages corresponding to a particular dataset.

 

Upcoming Features

We will be adding a lot of new features and databases on this portal in the coming months. An active Discussion Forum will be integrated on the portal very soon. Moreover, more Central and State specific schemes will be added on the Schemes dashboard in the coming months.

 

Suggestions & Feedback

We would be glad to hear from you; your suggestions and feedback would help us improve the platform further. Please write to us at: [email protected]