[examples/openspending] - openspending v0.2 (#907)
* [examples/openspending] - openspending v0.2 * [examples/openspending][m] - fix build * [examples/openspending][xs] - fix build * [examples/openspending][xs] - add prebuild step * [examples/openspending][m] - fix requested by demenech * [examples/openspending][sm] - remove links + fix bug
This commit is contained in:
Luccas Mateus
GitHub
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---
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lead: true
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title: Centre for Public Interest Advocacy
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authors:
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- Neil Ashton
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---
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<div class="well">After meeting the team from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (CPI) at
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the POINT conference in Sarajevo in 2012, a proposal was launched to
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start the Budzeti.ba project (<a href="http://budzeti.ba/">beta version</a>). In November 2012, the project had a kick-off workshop to get
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the ball rolling and cover some of the key data-wrangling issues faced
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by CSOs wanting to create a budget monitoring site. </div>
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This workshop happened shortly after the [Spending Data Handbook](http://community.openspending.org/research/handbook/) sprint and was a great opportunity to do a test run on the material.
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## What we covered
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Some of the topics we covered were:
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* An introduction to [DataWrapper](http://datawrapper.de/) for making simple charts and web visualisations
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* [Kartograph](http://kartograph.org/) for making elegant maps
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* Scraping using [ScraperWiki](http://scraperwiki.com/)
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* Using Optical Character Recognition to get data out of PDFs
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* Cleaning data using [Google Refine](http://code.google.com/p/google-refine/)
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Also present at this workshop were the team from [Expert Grup in Moldova](../expert-grup/), prior to the launch of their Budget Stories project.
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## Status
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The Budzeti.ba project is still in progress and is due for a full launch
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in Autumn 2013. The aim of the project is to provide a one-stop shop for
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budget information in a format which is accessible for citizens.
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## Comprehensibility of budget data
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The training in Bosnia was a trigger to build on the material in the Spending Data Handbook by developing some guidelines on how to make data published by governments more accessible for citizens. In practice, this is often a process of simplification and aggregating large datasets so as not to overwhelm the viewer. One of the key methodologies which was used to produce [Where Does My Money Go?](http://wheredoesmymoneygo.org) was to think carefully about how we aggregated the data and opting for functional classifications.
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### Demanding data in functional classifications: why and what's difficult?
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1. Countries such as Bosnia [do not publish Citizen’s
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Budgets](http://survey.internationalbudget.org/#profile/BA) in the
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first place. This means that a functional classification has to come entirely
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from civil society, leading to worries from the CSO that the
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interpretation of the data may be contested.
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2. Some countries do not group their data by functional
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classifications. This is important, as the average citizen is more
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likely to want to know what money is spent on (i.e. what services
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they got in exchange for their tax money) than, for example, which
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government department is spending the money, which is all it is
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possible to infer from many budgets.
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3. For the purposes of visualisations such as OpenSpending's,
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organisations such as CPI must classify the complex information
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contained in budgets for themselves in a form which is accessible
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and yet not overwhelming for citizens. There are practical
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implications to this. Having more than 10 top-level
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items in a budget, for example, results in a very cramped visualisation, and there are only so many categories a person can take in at
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any one time. For visualisation purposes, the CPI team
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classified the data in a schema similar to the internationally
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recognised [Classifications of Functions of Government](http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cr/registry/regcst.asp?Cl=4), as was used
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in the UK project [Where Does My Money Go?](http://wheredoesmymoneygo.org/).
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More information about the classification methodology they used can be
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found in the blog post: [Bosnian Budgets - grouping data by categories people
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care
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about](http://community.openspending.org/2012/11/bosnian-budgets-grouping-data-by-categories-people-care-about/).
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**Next**: [Expert Grup](../expert-grup/)
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**Up**: [Case Studies: Budgets](../)
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---
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lead: true
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title: Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability
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authors:
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- Neil Ashton
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---
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<div class="well">Before a tech project even gets off the ground, it needs a good source of data. On our trip to India, the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability clearly outlined the problems they have with the data released by governments.</div>
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Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) is a policy research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, India. Its work promotes transparent, participatory, and accountable governance and a people-centred perspective in government budgets.
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The main questions CBGA asks are about the priorities underlying budgets, the quality of government interventions in the social sector, the responsiveness of policies and budgets to disadvantaged sections of population (e.g. religious minorities, scheduled castes, women), the progressivity of the taxation policies, and some of the structural issues in India’s fiscal federalism.
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They talked about some of the problems they had had in using the data on expenditure made available by the Union Government and State Governments in India. Here are a few of their most striking points.
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* The data is very aggregated. There's no geographical breakdown of the data; for example, in the Union Budget, there is no disaggregation for statewise allocations or expenditures, and likewise in a State Budget, it's not possible to see how much is spent in a particular district.
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* There are particular budgetary strategies and categories for public expenditure on disadvantaged groups (viz. the "scheduled caste subplan" and "tribal subplan"), but the reporting using these categories is not very reliable. It has been found that a lot of general expenditure is reported under these heads. Suppose, for example, the government has spent some money on construction of a hospital; even though it's not meant specifically for the scheduled castes, the government may apportion around 20% of the cost for the hospital under the scheduled caste subplan. In the absence of programmes or schemes designed specifically for scheduled castes or scheduled tribes, some of the state governments have been relying on such a superficial process of reporting expenditures under "scheduled caste sub plan" and "tribal sub plan".
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* It is very difficult to get the complete picture of public spending in any particular sector. In many of the Union Government schemes (e.g. the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, National Rural Health Mission, etc.), the Union Budget funds do not flow through the State Budgets or the State Government Treasury System; these funds are sent directly to autonomous bank accounts of implementing agencies. As a result, the State Budget documents of any State in India do not show the complete picture of government spending in that State.
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* In some of the Union Government schemes where the Union Budget funds are routed outside the State Budgets, fund advances to implementing agencies get reported as expenditures, and there is no way we can ascertain whether the money has actually been spent or is lying parked in the bank account at some level.
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As regards State Budget data, CBGA gets PDFs from the websites of the State Governments in about one third of States – with the rest, they have to procure hard copies from offices of the Finance Departments of the States.
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A matrix of available budget data sources for India and comments about their usability has been compiled by the CBGA team and can be found [online](http://www.cbgaindia.org/sources_for_budget_data.htm).
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<em>See the full list of organisations we visited on the India trip on the <a href="http://in.okfn.org/2012/09/18/okfn-india-trip-the-roundup/">OKFN-India blog</a></em>.
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**Next**: [Centre for Public Interest Advocacy](../bosnia/)
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**Up**: [Case Studies: Budgets](../)
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---
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lead: true
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title: Expert Grup
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authors:
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- Neil Ashton
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---
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<div class="well">Project: <a href="http://www.budgetstories.md/">Budgetstories, Moldova.</a></div>
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In mid 2012, Expert Grup began to work to make sense of huge budget
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datasets. In November 2012, while finalizing the project concept,
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members of the organising team took part in the [Balkan Budget
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Workshop](http://openspending.org/blog/2012/11/26/Sarajevo-Workshop-Writeup.html) organised by the OpenSpending team.
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> “It was really helpful to learn about data formats. It is the equivalent
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> of a data literacy 101 class.” - <strong> Victoria Vlad </strong>
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## About the team
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The core BudgetStories.md team at Expert Grup
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consists of three core staff members: the project director, one project
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communication and analytical expert, and one additional analytic expert
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as support. The implementation was made with an external web design
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company who executed the website based on input from the team. The web
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company had a total of five people working on BudgetStories.md: two
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designers, two developers, and one project manager.
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Expert Grup has introduced several projects using open budget and
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spending data. The main challenges they've encountered have related to
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accessing data, cleaning the data (using Excel), and managing the data
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visualisation work, which was done by an an external web agency.
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Most of the needed data was available to the public on
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[data.gov.md](http://data.gov.md/) and in the World Bank's [BOOST data
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tool](http://www.mf.gov.md/ro/BOOST/), and government agencies were open
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to providing direct requests for data requested in a timely manner. The
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data was analysed with Excel. During the research, Expert Grup used the
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<a href="http://community.openspending.org/resources/handbook/">Spending Data Handbook</a>, the <a href="http://opendatahandbook.org/">Open Data Handbook</a> and the <a href="http://datajournalismhandbook.org/">Data Journalism
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Handbook</a> as resources.
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## Technical challenges
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### Presenting the data
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> “It is still a challenge for us to make visualizations meaningful. We plan to improve with every infographic we
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> publish.”
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Expert Grup is planning to work more on developing their
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presentations of their data. Most of their visualisations have been
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developed by a web agency based on the directions from Expert Grup. One
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exception is the visualisation of the [Moldova
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budget](http://www.budgetstories.md/bugetul-2013/), which was created with
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OpenSpending treemaps by Expert Grup.
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In the future Expert Grup wil be looking to expand their work.
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> “There is still a lot of work to be done. We have until now published three data
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> visualizations.”
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So far their portfolio includes excellent examples like these:
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* The [Budget
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calendar](http://www.budgetstories.md/anul-bugetar-2013/), which enables
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citizens to track and learn about the budget approval process for
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2012 - 2014 as an interactive module, including the documents which
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need to be published at each stage of the budget process.
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* An OpenSpending budget treemap, added in order to provide a meaningful
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visualization of the [annual
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proposal](http://www.budgetstories.md/afla-cat-ne-a-costat-parlamentul-in-2012/)
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* A visualisation of the [agricultural subsidy
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program](http://www.budgetstories.md/subventiile-pentru-agricultura-in-2012-pentru-ce-cui-si-unde-au-fost-alocate/).
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## Community challenges
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<strong>Engaging CSOs in spending data:</strong> According to Expert Grup civil society
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(NGOs, journalists, and universities) has until now shown little
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knowledge of or interest in the existence of open data. The goal has
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therefore been to engage with and educate journalists and policymakers.
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The main site was launched in February and gave journalists access to cleaned data sets and visualisations for the first time
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journalists, as well as
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encouraging their republishing and reuse in the public. The aim would be
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to gain increased public attention to inefficiencies identified in
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government spending and establish connections to more stakeholders. The
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results of the outreach are still being assessed.
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Source: [Guest blog post on
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OpenSpending](http://community.openspending.org/2013/02/budgetstories-md-using-open-budget-data-to-create-meaningful-stories/).
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**Next**: [Case Studies: Spending](../../case-studies-spending/)
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**Up**: [Case Studies: Budgets](../)
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---
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lead: true
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title: 'Case Studies: Budgets'
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authors:
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- Neil Ashton
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---
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The word "budget" can refer to different things in different circles, but for the purposes of this report we adopt a technical definition: a budget is a planning document that provides the details of a spending policy, typically breaking the policy down by aggregated categories rather than individual planned transactions.
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Across communities and across the globe, there is a push for making budgets accessible in a timely and granular form. Groups have sprung up all over creating meaningful ways to explore and explain to citizens what's really in their budgets. Some groups pioneer detailed budget calendars enabling citizens to follow the budgeting process, while other groups challenge governments by tracking budget codes and how funds actually shift form year to year.
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This section explores some of the diversity of groups using budget data as well as their common concerns and demands. It asks what these CSOs hope to achieve by drawing on budget data and what technological and political obstacles they encounter in doing so.
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Several different kinds of work are covered in this section, including completed budget data projects ([Lost Money](./lost-money/), [OpenBudgetOakland](./openbudgetoakland/)), ongoing work by policy researchers and advocates ([Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability, India](./cbga/)), and the results of workshops building up to future projects ([Budzeti.ba](./bosnia/), [Expert Grup](./expert-grup/)).
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* [Lost Money](./lost-money/)
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* [OpenBudgetOakland](./openbudgetoakland/)
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* [Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability, India](./cbga/)
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* [Budzeti.ba](./bosnia/)
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* [Expert Grup](./expert-grup/)
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**Next**: [Bani pierduti? (Lost Money)](./lost-money/)
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**Up**: [Mapping the Open Spending Data Community](../)
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---
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lead: true
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title: Bani pierduti? (Lost Money)
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authors:
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- Neil Ashton
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---
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<strong>This is a profile of a very interesting new project coming out of Romania, aiming to make government finances understandable for the average citizen. It is written based on contributions from <a href="https://twitter.com/MadamadePica" target="_blank">Elena Calistru</a>, who kicked off the project.</strong>
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## Vital Statistics
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<div class="well">
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<ul>
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<li><strong>Name of Project:</strong> Bani pierduti? (Or, in English, "Lost money?")</li>
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<li><strong>Link to project: <a href="http://www.banipierduti.ro" target="_blank">banipierduti.ro</a></strong></li>
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<li><strong>Approximate number of users engaged through the project:</strong> over 30,000</li>
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</ul>
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</div>
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<img alt="" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8289/7607848026_21cbeef8ed_b.jpg" title="Lost Money" class="alignnone" width="640" height="480" />
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## What is the background of the project?
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The project is one of the five winners of the <a href="http://restartromania.netsquared.org" target="_blank">Restart Romania 2011</a> competition, initiated by <a href="http://www.techsoup.ro/" target="_blank">Techsoup Romania</a> with the support of the US Embassy to Bucharest.
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Starting at the beginning of August 2011, 104 projects were registered for the Social Justice Challenge Restart Romania and went under the scrutiny of the community. In the end, a jury formed by representatives of the diplomatic community, business sector, and IT industry decided the selection of 10 finalist projects. Between 28 - 30 October, the Restart Romania Hackathon transformed the ten ideas with the help of programmers and communication specialists into more concrete platforms which were presented within the Restart Romania Gala. Bani Pierduti was voted within the Gala as one of the five winners of 5000 USD funding.
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## What are the aims?
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The project formerly known as *"Where’s my LEI, man?"* entered the competition aiming to centralize publicly available financial information regarding the projects financed through public money (budgets, annual reports, etc.). The main objective was make authorities accountable in the manner in which public funds are spent.
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After winning the Restart Romania Gala, the project went through a re-thinking aiming to identify both the best technologies for a more complex platform than initially planned and the necessary datasets which would allow the best representation of how public funds are spent in Romania. If at the very beginning the project only aimed at using state budget data, it now operates with data comprising the budgets dedicated to social assistance and public health, the budgets at local level for the Romanian counties, projects financed through EU funds, comparisons with the percentage allocated to various sectors in other EU counties, and more.
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The project is a now a permanent programme of a newly-established NGO, <a href="http://www.funkycitizens.org/" target="_blank">Funky Citizens</a> (website under construction at time of publication), which aims to engage civil society (taxpayers) in the decision-making processes related to public funds through the use of technology. Its major objectives are:
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* Improving the number of people who are aware of this issue and improving the quality of public understanding
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* Offering information and tools for influencing the decision-making process
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|
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To achieve its objectives, the project relies on three pillars:
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* Data & process presentation
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* Public participation
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* Understanding the bigger picture
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## How does the platform tackle the issues you outlined?
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The three pillars of the platform respond to the following problems:
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### Problem #1: Fiscal policies represent a mystery for the majority of citizens
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<strong>Consequences:</strong> Lack of information and understanding of the process; scarce public oversight of public funds administration; public spending is associated with corruption and distrust
|
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|
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<strong>How we respond:</strong> Educate citizens on the topic
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### Problem #2: Little or no participation of the community in fiscal policy
|
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|
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<strong>Consequences:</strong> Limited use of existing tools for participation to the decision-making process; needs of the community not reflected in the resource allocation; no feedback to the policy makers on their decisions
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<strong>How we respond:</strong> Facilitate direct participation
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|
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### Problem #3: Lack of vision from governments on investment / development priorities
|
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|
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<strong>Consequences:</strong> Short-term planning leading to limited predictability and accountability; bad administration, mismanagement, or corruption in public spending; incoherence between the fiscal policy and other public policies
|
||||
|
||||
<strong>How we respond:</strong> Analyse and understand data
|
||||
|
||||
<img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8432/7787652558_79191020ee_o.png" title="Lost Money 2" class="alignnone" />
|
||||
|
||||
## What is the role of technology in the approach to solving that problem?
|
||||
|
||||
The role of technology is an important one, since the web-based platform is the main feature of the project. So far, transparency in fiscal policy can be achieved only through complicated documents published on the websites of the authorities or through FOIA requests. Also, there were previously no e-participatory budgeting experiences, the only means of organizing public debates on budgetary issues being offline events.
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||||
|
||||
## What are the successes of this project?
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||||
|
||||
The project is still very young and in its early stages. However, the evaluation of its outcomes already shows several approaches which proved successful:
|
||||
|
||||
* A consultation process with relevant governmental stakeholders prior to the launch of the project proved to be a good approach in ensuring a supportive or at least a not contentious interaction with the authorities, given the sensitivity of the subject.
|
||||
* The gradual implementation and launch of the features of the platform seems like a successful strategy to educate citizens on a difficult subject while creating interest in and awareness of the topic.
|
||||
* The engagement of different categories of supporters of the project (from young dynamic professionals to the diplomatic community) ensured greater visibility for the initiative and is expected to further enlarge the community of advocates for more transparency in fiscal matters.
|
||||
|
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## Are there areas where the project failed? What are the challenges?
|
||||
|
||||
The main challenges to the project are mostly related to two major issues encountered by such initiatives:
|
||||
|
||||
* The absence of an open data approach in the release of official information related to public spending makes the implementation of the project slower as well as resource-consuming.
|
||||
* A general perception that public money are lost due to corruption makes people less inclined to look closer at the entire policy cycle and thus the efforts to educate or to engage them harder.
|
||||
|
||||
<img alt="" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8289/7787652740_dae031a763_o.png" title="Lost Money 3" class="alignnone" width="640" height="480" />
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||||
|
||||
## Have you had particular problems with the data?
|
||||
|
||||
Romania has just joined the Open Government Partnership, and the implementation of the open data format for governmental data sets is expected to take at least a few years. The various data formats present on the websites of authorities, or even their absence in several cases, made data collection a rather difficult process.
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|
||||
## Are you actively seeking the involvement of the user groups?
|
||||
|
||||
The project also foresees that an entire pillar of the platform (“public participation”) will actively seek the involvement of the user groups. The implementation of this service started with two features (large investment projects timelines and legislative early warnings) which seek an interaction with the public, and future plans propose to increase the amount of citizen participation. For example, there are plans to do this by:
|
||||
|
||||
* encouraging direct feedback into laws already in draft stages, allowing users to cut, add to, and restructure proposed bills on the basis of desired budgetary outcomes
|
||||
* building a simulator for the central budget, allowing people to visualise and explore the effect of different revenue and expenditure policies (e.g. raising taxes)
|
||||
* promoting public participation in the annual budget cycle through a calendar of debates on budgets as well as pilot offline events with webcasts
|
||||
|
||||
The most consistent involvement features are expected to be implemented by the end of 2012 – early 2013, as a second stage in the development of the project.
|
||||
|
||||
## What are the plans for the future?
|
||||
|
||||
The project was planned as a continuously growing platform, and its scaling or additional features were taken into consideration from the very beginning. A mobile feature is expected to be implemented into the web platform in 2013, a plan which also involves the use of social audits for public contracts.
|
||||
|
||||
**Next**: [OpenBudgetOakland](../openbudgetoakland/)
|
||||
|
||||
**Up**: [Case Studies: Budgets](../)
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
lead: true
|
||||
title: OpenBudgetOakland
|
||||
authors:
|
||||
- Neil Ashton
|
||||
---
|
||||
<div class="well">Project: <a href="http://openbudgetoakland.org/">OpenBudgetOakland</a>, launched
|
||||
April 2013.</div>
|
||||
Open Budget Oakland is a group of civic hackers working on budget
|
||||
issues. At the beginning of 2013, they initiated the idea
|
||||
of launching a budget visualization site, with the goal to increase
|
||||
participation from citizens and stimulate citizen debate around the
|
||||
city budget. The platform should enable citizens to explore budget
|
||||
nuances, to discuss the implications of policy decisions, and to ask informed questions, and it should
|
||||
facilitate information flow from experts in the field to interested citizens.
|
||||
|
||||
In February 2013, Open Budget Oakland connected with OpenSpending in
|
||||
order to plan the launch of [OpenBudgetOakland.org](http://openbudgetoakland.org/).
|
||||
From February and up until April, the small team worked to complete the
|
||||
app and launch it in time for the Mayor’s annual release of the budget
|
||||
proposal for 2013-2015. The team succeeded launching the visualization
|
||||
of the proposed budget on the day of its release. Shortly after the
|
||||
launch, the project gained recognition from the City of Oakland as it was
|
||||
offered to [present the project at city
|
||||
hall](https://twitter.com/openbudgetOAK/status/329667951265472512/photo/1).
|
||||
|
||||
<iframe width='100%' height='400' src='http://openspending.org/oakland-adopted-budget-fy-2011-13-expenditures/embed?widget=treemap&state=%7B%22drilldowns%22%3A%5B%22department%22%2C%22unit%22%2C%22child-fund%22%5D%2C%22year%22%3A2012%2C%22cuts%22%3A%7B%7D%7D&width=700&height=400' frameborder='0'></iframe>
|
||||
|
||||
## Technological setup and challenges
|
||||
|
||||
The first budget of Oakland was accessed in July 2012 as a 350-page
|
||||
PDF file, which was copy-pasted into a coherent spreadsheet and an
|
||||
almost-interactive pie chart at a
|
||||
[one-day](http://codeforoakland.org/meet-our-2012-winning-apps) hackathon.
|
||||
The process led directly to this conclusion:
|
||||
>“accessing Oakland city budget data isn’t easy, and even once you have data, it isn’t
|
||||
> immediately clear how it can be shared in a way that helps people.”
|
||||
|
||||
The small volunteer team at Open Budget Oakland built the site within a
|
||||
few months of 2013 based on OpenSpending technology, adding two new
|
||||
distinct features. From March 2013, OpenOakland engaged several email
|
||||
conversations on the OpenSpending mailing lists and received
|
||||
contributions via GitHub from OpenSpending developers:
|
||||
|
||||
1. a [Disqus](http://disqus.com/) commenting module, which enables
|
||||
users to discuss each spending item and thus improve participation
|
||||
2. a browsing feature for the OpenSpending histogram view, enabling
|
||||
easier navigation in OpenSpending
|
||||
3. [D3](http://d3js.org) for visualising income and expenditure in one
|
||||
chart [budget visualisation
|
||||
developed](http://www.peterkrantz.com/2012/data-visualization-tools/) developed
|
||||
by Peter Krantz, another OpenSpending community member
|
||||
|
||||
Open Budget Oakland has also considered the possibility of pursuing
|
||||
transactional spending data, though this is not available at the moment
|
||||
from the Oakland City Council.
|
||||
|
||||
## Community
|
||||
|
||||
The community is considered key for generating a budget discussion going
|
||||
forward past the initial media coverage.
|
||||
|
||||
Open Budget Oakland is a part of Open Oakland, which has a volunteer
|
||||
team of 21 members working across the entire open government agenda. The
|
||||
group organises weekly meetups for volunteers and is supported by Code
|
||||
for America.
|
||||
|
||||
Coverage: [TechPresident](http://techpresident.com/news/23749/oakland-gets-new-data-visualization-site-its-budget) and
|
||||
[Oakland Local](http://oaklandlocal.com/article/open-oakland-opening-oakland%E2%80%99s-budget-community-voices) (community
|
||||
blog).
|
||||
|
||||
**Next**: [Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability](../cbga/)
|
||||
|
||||
**Up**: [Case Studies: Budgets](../)
|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user