Gyumri will be the first city in Armenia which will have a budget presented through an interactive website, meaning that on one side of the site

incomes of the local budget will be reflected and on the other side of the site expenditures of the local budget will be presented with their detailed descriptions. Other communities do not have such an experience yet.
According to the research done by the Center, processes of developing, implementing and monitoring of the community budget is carried out in a nontransparent and non-participatory way. There is a lack of citizens’ real participation or even absence of it in all stages of the budget process. It is obvious that citizens have lack of knowledge and information about the community budget. According to the results of survey 44 % of about 200 residents of Gyumri were totally unaware about Gyumri community budget, 51 % were partially aware /for example, approximate total amount, etc. /,and 75% were not satisfied with the results of Gyumri budget.
The main reasons of not participating in the budgeting processes were mentioned that community budget is ununderstandable /59%/, not knowing how to participate /25 %/ and other reasons /7%, lack of time, etc./. Only 9 % of respondents mentioned that they didn’t worry about the community budget.
Based on above mentioned survey results ««COMPASS» training, research and consultancy center» NGO with the support of Open Society Foundations and Think Tank Foundation, in the near future will create an interactive website aimed at raising awareness about the community budget among citizens of Gyumri, as well as increase the level of participation of citizens in the decision making process of budget. The aim of the project is to contribute to the development and implementation of the needs based and more transparent and efficient budgeting policy through raising awareness about the financial decisions made by the local self-government members, ensuring wise and informative participation of citizens in the budgeting process and providing expert consultancy. Data in the website will be refreshed quarterly. It will give an opportunity to all citizens of Gyumri ask questions to the experts of the sphere, give recommendation, which will be summarized and periodically presented to Gyumri city mayor and City Council members. Project team already has a preliminary agreement with the Gyumri municipality about the cooperation within the framework of the project. Meetings with the city mayor Samvel Balasanyan , as well as members of the City Council is planned. As an outcome, within the framework of the project an interactive website showing the community budget of Gyumri will be created, which will provide comprehensive and fresh information about the community budget in an open format. The creation of an interactive website could be a successful example for other communities of the Republic of Armenia. Moreover, advocacy network will be created, which will work in the direction of monitoring the local budgeting policy. Interactive website will be ready on July, 2015 and will include Gyumri’s community budgets of previous years, as well as current budget with periodically refreshed data.