Funky Citizens, a Romanian civil initiative to build research-based, data-driven online advocacy tools, is inviting its followers to participate in analysing the municipal budget of Cluj-Napoca. This move was triggered after several errors were found in the 2015 draft budget. According to Funky Citizens, the municipal government reacted openly and quickly when confronted with these errors.

Funky Citizens was started by four passionate university graduates in law, political science and economics. These graduates are fighting what they see as a lack of accountability in the management of public money in Romania. The website provides citizens with insight into how public money is spent and offers tools to participate in making budgetary decisions at national and local level.

Participation

The organisation is most known for its banipierduti.ro portal — their flagship, as they call it — which aims at engaging taxpayers in decision-making processes related to public spending. Recently, they launched the factual.ro portal, where statements made by government officials are fact-checked.

Other activities related to the area of good governance and justice reform include: membership of the civil society platform monitoring the National Anticorruption Strategy; membership of a coalition of 10 NGOs engaged in the process of revising the constitution; constant participation on behalf of civil society in activities for the implementation of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in Romania; and advocacy for the implementation of the UNCAC in Romania.