Norway has the tradition of ministerial rule in the central government and has a high degree of delegated authority to budget entities and lower tiers of government.   In Norway, the public authorities at the local level have a high degree of autonomy and are responsible for a wide range of public services within e.g. the health and education sector. The municipalities also receive state funding through the Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation. The activities at the local level should also be recognised when assessing the the gender responsiveness in pubic financial management.  Some important features of the Norwegian central government administration and mode of decision-making set the stage for how policies are developed and implemented in the policy area of gender equality.  The mode of decision-making in the Norwegian central government may be characterised by seeking consensus and involving interest groups in policy formulation and evaluation. In many areas the relevant ministry may delegate this authority to a subordinate agency that enjoys a high degree of managerial flexibility. This system enables the solving of actual problems in a flexible way and in accordance with public consensus among affected groups and political authorities. The consensus-based approach to decision-making draws its strength and effectiveness from a close and informal network of contacts within government and society, based on mutual trust. This contrasts with systems based on control from a central unit based on specific criteria.   The Government�s work on gender equality is based on the principle of sectoral responsibility and the principle of gender mainstreaming, which is a duty by law to actively promote equality and to report on it annually.  When looking at the gender responsiveness in Norway�s public financial management, one would have to look at all sectors. Gender equality is a cross-sectoral issue and not a result of one sector�s efforts. The interrelated results from sevel sectors have had an impact on society and have over time lead Norway to being rated as one the most gender equal countries in the world.   As a general rule, the Norwegian budget system and the Government�s budget proposals are meant to ensure a comprehensive balance of a whole range of various policy objectives. Therefore, in our view, the budget alone is perhaps not an appropriate tool for illustrating how the Government achieves results on equality or, more specifically, results on gender equality. This is one of the reasons why the Norwegian central government budget has rather few explicit objectives on crosscutting issues and few direct measures regarding gender and equality. The government usually chooses to supplement with other measures together with the budget. These include instructions regarding mainstreaming and crosscutting issues, regulations and administrative directives but also provisions by law. In addition, the Government has crosscutting strategies and action plans that cover policies in several sectors.  Today in Norway, the public authorities have a particular statutory duty to ensure gender equality in legislation and policy. In addition, they have to report on their activities. In January 2020, the provisions relating to active equality efforts in the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Act were clarified and strengthened. Section 24 of the Act requires that all public authorities must work actively and systematically to promote equality in all their activities, including budgeting. This includes a gender equality perspective as well as an intersectional perspective.  In 2005, the Duty to actively promote equality and report annually (ARP) was introduced first in the former Gender Equality Act, with much debate in Parliament. Later it was introduced in the other anti-discrimination acts. After 2013, the ARP was �softened up� due to political decisions. In 2018, the duty was strengthened in the recent Equality and Non-discr.Act, after a voting in Parliament. In 2020 a Guidance was produced by The Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Familiy Affairs (BUFdir, the national agency responsible for equality and non-discrimination) and the LDO (The Equality Ombud). 2020  is the first fiscal year with the new reporting regime.  In 2018 a new comprehensive Equality and Anti-Discrimination Act entered into force, replacing the four previous equality and anti-discrimination acts with just one. The new Act prohibits discrimination on the grounds of gender, pregnancy, maternity/paternity leave in connection to birth or adoption, caring for children or close family members, ethnicity, religion, belief, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression or age, or a combination of the abovementioned grounds. The purpose of gathering the acts in one legal framework is to make the legal protection against discrimination more accessible and thus more efficient. The legal framework also reflects how the government organises its work on equality issues.  Development in recent decades has shown that the assessment may lose important aspects of Norwegian equality policies and results, by merely addressing gender equality and not including other discrimination grounds and an intersectional perspective.  The ministries are responsible for policy development and execution. Each ministry is responsible for developing, administrating and overseeing regulations and policy measures within their own sector. Each minister is accountable to the Storting (the Parliament). Each ministry has several subordinate state agencies under their own sector, often named directorates. As a main rule, the ministries provide annual instructions to their agencies on how to execute the policies. The annual reports from the state agencies contain a great deal of information on results and achievements related to political goals. Some of this information, but far from all, is part of the annual report to the Storting (Parliament) in the Government�s annual budget proposal.  All state entities ( there is in total 196 state Agencies or Directorates under the ministries) that are under instruction/required to report annually � given the line of �command and delegations� from the Ministries, answering the annual Letters of Delegation & Tasks & Budgets, the Equality law, and all the (more than 100) sectorial laws based on service performance standards set by Government and Parliament. One can find explicit gender assessments in many of the annual reports. The municipalities have to do annual reporting on service deliveries, through KOSTRA (municipal to state reporting system).  To follow up on sectoral responsibilities and ensure a comprehensive equality policy, the Ministry of Culture and Equality is responsible for coordination. The Ministry helps gather knowledge, coordinates the work of the ministries, and deals with overall reporting on international obligations.  The Norwegian Directorate of Children, Youth and Family Affairs (Bufdir) is partly instructed by the Minster of Culture and Equality and partly instructed by the Ministry of Childen and Family Affairs. One of Bufdir tasks is being a specialist agency for gender equality, disability, ethnicity and sexual orientation, gender identity and gender issues. Bufdir�s tasks include documentation and knowledge development, promoting equality and providing guidance to public offices, executing policy measures (including following up national action plans), and administrating grant schemes for gender equality policy organisations.  The government usually chooses to supplement with other measures together with the budget. These include instructions regarding mainstreaming, provisions of law, regulations and administrative directives.   Furthermore, the Norwegian government is based on ministries with high autonomy and a high degree of delegated authority to budget entities and lower tiers of government. Each ministry has one or several directorates that receives their funding from the ministry responsible for the sector that goes together with an annual letter of instruction. Many of the central instruments in Norway are built into the Norwegian welfare system at the sectorial or municipality level. The planning and reporting of equality results, including on gender, are decentralised based on a high degree of managerial flexibility and trust. The Norwegian public sector governance relies on defined outcomes on how public funds are used, monitored through a highly developed national statistical system, periodic evaluations and result reporting on outcomes or impacts. In general, access to sex-disaggregated statistical data in policy areas is well-developed in Norway compared with other countries.   There have been  attempts to include GRB/GBA-documentation in previous years. Some examples of gender policies and efforts of gender responsive budgeting, reflecting the political dynamics:  Since the mid-nineties (as a result of the Beijing conference and Beijing Platform/Plan of Action), some state funding was allocated to the Councils of Regional Government to establish a �gender focal point� � to monitor the regional and local development of GE. This measure ceased to exist after 2000. The last position faded out in 2001 (Rogaland).  The County Governors (CGs) were given the authority to monitor and oversee the GE-work in the regions in 2000. They still have this duty, see the Letter of delegation, Tasks and Budget to the CGs, from the Ministry of Local Govt for 2019-2020, where Min of Culture and Equality (formerly the the Ministry of Children and Equality), gave the input on targets and outcome, and may require dialogue with the CGs on the matter.  In 2003 the Ministry of Children and Equality decided to transfer funds to Statistics Norway (SSB) and made an agreement with SSB to conduct gender disaggregated data along 12 different indicators,to high light difference in the level of gender equality at local level in the different minucipalities; to be used in policy making. In 2013 the monitoring of this task was delegated to the Directorate for Children,Youth and Family (BUFdir).    Statistics Norway (SSB) nevertheless continues to do an important job (see multiple reports and work hard to make data and analysis easy accessable to the public.The data form SSB is also easy accessable to the different sectorial ministries; and most ministries rely on these measurements in budget and policy planning.   The main support to women (and men) in Norway lies within the sector ministries that instruct and delegate tasks to their underlying directorates. The current Ministry of Culture and Equality (separated from the former Ministry of Children and Equality responsible for family policies in 2019), neither has large means nor a Decision from King in Council (Kgl.resolusjon) to instruct other Ministries, with exception of the Equality and Non-discrimination Act and the herein duty to report on activities and results, and the IOS� Guidance Notes etc.   In 2002 -2005 the Minister of Children and Equality decided to �gender-test� the state budget, and raised the issue with her fellow ministers. This resulted in funding of courses and seminars across the central Govt., driven by experts in the Ministry of Children and Equality, inspired by Sweden and Swedish Experts, and later from the Council of Europe�s excellent toolkit on GRB. This work resulted in many efforts from different line ministries, reporting on allocation of means, assessments of gender impact of programs and lifting inputs on gender from their directorates or municipalities. It was not prolonged as a basic, mandatory approach.  This �gender testing movement� was held up by the then Group of State Secretaries for GE, a permanent from the 1990s to 2013. It was dissolved as �bureaucracy� due to political changes. Up to 2014, there was also a permanent group of High Level Civil Servants from all line ministries, headed by the Director General of the Equality and Family Policy Department (in the Ministry of Children and Equality), to inform, discuss and agree upon gender issues implications in all sectors and state agencies. This group was dissolved due to arguments of bureaucracy. Today occationaly when there is a need to anchor goals or priorities across sectors, the state secretary in the Minister of Culture and Equality will invite state secretaries in other sector ministries for a meeting. Such meetings take place when starting up a new proccess or to finalise a proccess, when there need for agreement a cross sectors on commen goals or priorities.   A gender perspective was in 2005, for the first time, lifted into the Main Budget Document (Circular) from the Ministry of Finance to the other ministries. It was later taken out, due to political decisions. Currently, a reference to the duty to actively promote equality and report on it is included in the Main Budget Circular from the Ministry of Finance to the other ministries. This document is used when preparing the state budget.   Up to 2016, the IOS contained the duty to evaluate ex ante, the gender implications of plans, programmes and large investments. This duty was taken out in 2016, and caused protests from many, within and outside the central govt. Thus, in 2018, the Guidance Notes on the IOS defines the issue of �fundamental questions� nr.3, to be: ��may for example relate to personal data protection and personal integrity, due process, questions of conscience/faith, questions  of equal opportunities/discrimination, or measures affecting in particular, indigenous populations or minorities �. Gender is not mentioned as such, in the 64 pages long guidance note.   There are examples of including additional reports to follow the state budget. For two years between 2005 and 2010, the then Minister of Children and Equality presented a detailed analysis of gender impacts of state policies, with statistics, as an added report to Parliament, under the Budget proposal. This additional report was evaluated and discontinued, because it was neither read nor used in policy making (not even in Parliament). It  was concluded that this special report was not needed. The annual reports in each line ministry�s budget proposal was assumed to be sufficient.   The Norwegian experience includes taking into account the factual and empirical results of Norwegian gender equality and welfare policies/family policies over the years and the fact that all sectors have a duty, by law, to produce gender equality within their welfare schemes.  The Government reports annually to the Storting on progress regarding the SDGs. The SDGs were taken into account when the national gender equality indicators (www.kj�nnslikestilling.no) were being developed, and several of them feature in the gender equality goals. The website �www.Kj�nnslikestilling.no� contains a large number of indicators divided into seven themes, and all the indicators specifically assess gender. Many of the figures are intended to be viewed in context with one another. For instance, several statistics are used to indicate educational pathways based on gender. All statistics/indicators are available on www.kj�nnslikestilling.no  The public financial management in Norway is under political leadership from the Government Council and its ministers. The state budget requires approvement from the Parliament, which is the legal and budgetary authority. Norway has a Ministerial model, that is: every minister stands responsible to Parliament for politics and actions in their sector  the political changes under different Government Councils and Parliaments.  The Constitution of Norway does not recognise the secretariats (the state civil service) as such, these cannot stand responsible to Parliament.  Looking back, it is possible to trace a strong political will to promote gender equality, across the different Governments, Parliments and different political parties in Norway.  Political leadership on gender equality priorities has over time had an impact on Norwegian society and resulted in Norway becoming one of the most gender equal countries in the world.