Effective management of territorial hromadas’ development is impossible without a thorough analysis of their financial potential. Assessing a hromada’s capacity means understanding its real capabilities. We present a tool that makes this process accessible and visually clear.
The dashboard was developed by Ihor Onyshchuk, a local budgets expert with the Swedish-Ukrainian Polaris Programme “Supporting Multilevel Governance in Ukraine.”
This tool is based on a comprehensive methodology that takes into account key financial indicators and provides a general overview of a hromada’s status, as well as helping to identify internal reserves for development.
In today’s context, where transparency and accountability are fundamental to good governance, local self-government bodies face increasing demands to provide citizens with financial data in a clear and understandable format. Interactive dashboards have become indispensable tools to achieve this goal, helping visualise complex financial information and improving public understanding of budgetary processes.
The assessment methodology is built on the principles of clarity, accessibility, and transparency. It relies on eight core indicators reflecting both the size of a hromada’s own resources and how effectively they are used. These include: general fund revenues per capita, capital expenditure, share of administrative costs, level of dependency on state subsidies, expenditure structure, and reliance on transfers from the national budget.
The assessment results in an integral index that classifies hromadas by capacity level – from critically low to high. This approach allows for comparisons between hromadas, identification of budgetary gaps, recognition of best practices, and formation of strategic growth benchmarks.
The dashboard is built in Power BI using official statistics from 2024. Its main advantage is interactivity: each indicator can be viewed separately, compared to the national average, and visualised to show the hromada’s budget structure. This opens up new possibilities for data-driven decision-making at the local level – based on clear, objective, and easily understandable data.
Moreover, the dashboard offers hromadas an external perspective – allowing them to benchmark themselves against other territories and assess their financial priorities. This supports greater internal accountability and lays the groundwork for constructive dialogue.
The tool not only reveals the financial “temperature” of a hromada – it enables the development of real, targeted strategies. For example, if a hromada has high capital spending but also a large share of salary costs, this signals a need for better budget balancing. If reliance on transfers exceeds normal levels, the focus should shift to increasing local revenues.
In just one click, you can:
• View a hromada’s integrated financial assessment
• Understand how effectively public funds are being spent
• Compare hromadas across key financial parameters
• Identify critical indicators to inform future management decisions
All data is based on official reports from 2024. The tool is designed for maximum convenience: region-by-region breakdown, community selector, dynamic visualisations, and automatic index calculation – everything to make financial analysis fast, accurate, and accessible to all.
Illustration: https://decentralization.ua/news/19465
