Use review of relevant documents and key informant interviews (with the authorities, local citizens who took part in the participatory budget planning, etc.) to collect and analyze the following data:
1) Assess what process local authorities use to decide on the spending of their budgets (how the spending priorities are identified, who decides and how decisions are made about the amount spent on each priority, etc.).
2) Define what exactly can be counted as “proposed through a participatory process”.
3) Set the time period covered by your survey (it should be the same as the authorities’ fiscal year).
4) Identify those priorities which were proposed for the given fiscal year through a participatory process (i.e. were priorities for a larger number of different people) and were financially supported from the authorities’ budget during the fiscal year.
5) Calculate the total financial value of the supported priorities.
6) Assess the authorities’ total spending in the given fiscal year.
7) To calculate the indicator’s value, divide the amount spent on priorities identified through participatory processes by the authorities’ total spending in the given fiscal year. Multiply the result by 100 to convert it to a percentage.