Online tool for tracking governmental election promises with detailed analysis and assessments provided by investigative journalists, addressing the lack of effective mechanisms for monitoring the fulfilment of political promises.

• Provides a clear overview and an archive of the ruling coalition election promises and their fulfilment.
• Increases governmental accountability and transparency.

Promise Made = Debt Unpaid online platform is the first web platform to track the status of political promises in Slovenia. Politicians prefer making promises to keeping them and, if there is nobody around to call them accountable, all the promises, albeit promising, turn out to be completely empty. Our platform keeps track of a selection of political promises from the coalition agreement, analysing the activities behind them and informing the public on their progress. The platform serves as a bulletin board for political promises and a constant reminder to politicians that they will be held accountable. We are combining civic technology tools with investigative journalism to raise the awareness of the public and politicians about the importance of political responsibility.

Distrust in politicians is traditionally high in Slovenia where the crisis of democracy is driven by disappointment with politics in general. This helps to maintain low voter participation and low legitimacy of decision makers and allows for lack of political accountability at all governmental levels. We wanted to address the of lack of effective mechanisms for monitoring the fulfillment of political promises, while fostering political and electoral engagement from the public that is significantly better informed and is no longer having to rely on political intuition, memory or daily reporting to make informed decisions.

As a part of broader project we are establishing a two-way communication with target audiences in public editorial meetings and stakeholder consultations in order to ensure a mutually beneficial transfer of information about political promises. With the information from the platform advocacy NGOs have a lesser burden to carry because they are equipped with verified information, a methodology to monitor promises, and can join trainings to gain more specialised knowledge. The platform is also serving as a source of information and inspiration for media reporting, and we are providing journalists with new skills during hands-on workshops so they will be able to better protect the public interest.

The project is presenting a mirror to political officials in which their efforts to achieve goals is reflected, and it serves as a reminder of the public watching which will hopefully increase their awareness of their own political responsibility.

Project partners:
Oštro, the Center for investigative reporting in the Adriatic region, and Danes je nov dan, the Institute for other studies, are complementing each other to bring the project to fruition. Effective and successful implementation of this project requires relevant and credible content, creative presentation, distribution and communication of content, as well progressive advocacy.

If you are interested in collaboration, don't hesitate to reach out to either Anuška Delić, Oštro (anuska@ostro.si) or Jasmina Ploštajner, Danes je nov dan (jasmina@djnd.si).