It is a simple checklist to see if specific documents are available on your municipality’s website. The checklist is based on Section 75 of the Municipal Finance Management Act
Holding your municipality accountable is a key component for an active citizen or civil society group but just how we do that is among one of the hardest questions to answer.
Where do you start and when have you reasonably done enough?
We often talk about the need for greater collaboration not only between communities but also with municipalities and communities but what does this collaboration look like? 
Clearly a key component of collaboration is the sharing of information. And this is often where the relationship breaks down.
Fortunately, here at the Community Action Network, we have developed a simple mechanism to help you keep your municipality in check from the comfort of your home’s best chair.
There is a chapter of the Municipal Finance Management Act, known as Section 75, that instructs each municipality as to what must be uploaded onto their website and accessible for public consumption.
Our experience has revealed that the reason why municipalities fail to honour this requirement is because:
They don’t want the added oversight.
There is no internal or external pressure on municipal officials to make the said documents publicly available on their website.
The municipal website is defunct.
There is little or no consequence from any other arm of government for not adhering to Section 75.
The municipality has loaded the documents onto their website but has made it near impossible to find.
We need to start holding our municipalities to a higher standard and the low hanging fruit to achieve just this is enforcing existing legislation through sustained public pressure. Join us.
How does the checklist work?
We are not checking for everything required in Section 75, That would simply be too time-consuming. Experts maintain there are five key documents that must be loaded onto the municipal website and that through these documents the financial health of the municipality can be ascertained and understood.
These are;
The annual budget, the annual report, all quarterly reports, the service delivery and budget implementation plan (SDBIP) and, the mid-year budget and performance review.
We have developed a simple tool to help you check if your municipality is compliant.
Follow these steps:
Visit your municipality’s website
Look for the documents required by the checklist.
If you find them, select Yes and provide a link to page , or select No if it is not there.
Submit
A score will be generated.
Through your assistance we will collate a database of how open and transparent our municipalities are and use the user generated data to place pressure on all local governments.
