Government Budget 75% open

What data is expected?

National government budget at a high level. This category is looking at budgets, or the planned government expenditure for the upcoming year, and not the actual expenditure. To satisfy this category, the following minimum criteria must be met:

• Planned budget divided by government department and sub-department
• Updated once a year.
• The budget should include descriptions regarding the different budget sections.

What data is available

•   Openly licensed? Yes(Here)
•   Is the data available for free? Yes
•   Is the data machine readable? No (n/a)
•   Available in bulk? No
•   Is the data provided on a timely and up to date basis? Yes
•   Publicly available? Yes(as The annual budget of the government of the Sultanate of Oman as published in the official gazette. published by Ministry of FinancesMinistry of Finances)
•   Is data in digital form? Yes
•   Is the data available online? Yes (Here)
•   Does the data exist? Yes

Details

The annual budget is published in Arabic in the Official Gazette and can be accessed from the website of the Ministry of Finances and the website of the Ministry of Legal Affairs. The budget provides a sector and department level breakdown of estimated expenses and profits. The latest budget documents (2014 and 2015) are only found as PDF files, while previous documents are available in XLS format.

The Annual Budget is issued through a Royal Decree, which is exempt from copyright protection and is there available freely to use, reuse, or to distribute. This is confirmed in Article 4(A) of the Omani Copyright Law (found here: http://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/text.jsp?file_id=180949 )

Additionally, the same budget document in PDF format could be downloaded from the website of the Ministry of Legal Affairs (Example: http://www.mola.gov.om/Download.aspx?Path=royal/1-2015.pdf ) and the terms and conditions of the website of the Ministry of Legal Affairs clearly state that:

"The website of the Ministry of Legal Affairs contains official documents such as Royal Decrees and Decisions and which are considered part of the public domain excluded from copyright protection and which may be reproduced, republished, and used without restrictions." (Taken from http://www.mola.gov.om/eng/websitepolicy.aspx )

Note: Arabic is the only official language in Oman and like majority of websites of the Omani government, the English sections of websites are rarely updated and information here is based on the Arabic content.

Reviewer comments

The website was not working during the review due to technical problem, accepting the submitter submission.