Province launches interactive budget website
Posted Nov 21, 2011 03:34:44 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The provincial government wants you to tell them how you would balance Nova Scotia’s budget.
As part of the pre-budget consultation process, a website has been launched where you can play finance minister for a day, called www.backtobalance.ca
The system cost the government $32,500 and allows the public to look at revenue and expenses and then use sliders to adjust spending or taxes.
When you’re done you can submit your final budget to the government.
Finance Minister Graham Steele hopes the information collected will show where there’s consensus from the public on certain issues.
“We really hope that we’re going to be able to post information about what results we’re getting in, but we don’t know if that will be weekly or monthly,” Steele says.
He says he hopes to be able to use the data collected when he’s crafting the next budget.
The website is easy to use and tells you what the consequences of your decision are.
For example, if you raise the tobacco tax, it warns more people could try to get cigarettes illegally, but the system is limited because it doesn’t give more than a couple of sentences of information on any one topic.
“What we’ve done is find a nice balance between having a realistic view of what does into the budget making process while still keeping it straight forward enough that Nova Scotians can work through it in 15 or 20 minutes,” Steele explains.
Steele admits it is relatively simple and can never duplicate the process of dealing with a $9-billion budget, but he hopes there’s an educational element to it that will help people better understand the different challenges.
He adds they’ll be able to tell if people or organizations are trying to skew the data by submitting numerous identical results.
