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89 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
89 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Expert Grup"
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---
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# Expert Grup
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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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