14974edcbf
* [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
92 lines
4.4 KiB
Markdown
92 lines
4.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Open Knowledge Foundation Greece"
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---
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<div class="well">Project: Tracing financial reporting from the Cl@rity program.</div>
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*This project review is based on the detailed review of Thodoris
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Papadopoulos, Open Knowledge Foundation Greece, Local Group.*
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Open Knowledge Foundation Greece is monitoring the financial reporting systems in
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Greece during the financial crisis, resulting in detailed reviews of
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the rapid legal and technical changes in the Greek financial
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reporting system. This has ultimately lead to several proposals for technical changes to the reporting standards.
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## About the project
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In Greece, the most important piece of legislation in recent years
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regarding the transparency of government action is the [Cl@rity](http://diavgeia.gov.gr/) (Diavgeia)
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program, which introduced the obligation to publish all the decisions of
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government and all administrative entities on the Internet.
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Cl@rity aims to generate maximum
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accessibility of government policy and administrative actions. Since the
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programme was launched in October 2010, almost 6 million administrative
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decisions have been uploaded to the Cl@rity website, with a daily
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average of 14,000 decisions.
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With the Cl@rity program, the enforceability of any administrative act
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presupposes a previous announcement on the Internet. Furthermore,
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Cl@rity provides an open data API in XML and JSON formats through which
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everyone can have structured access to all decisions, along with their
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metadata, ensuring openness and further dissemination of public
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information.
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The Cl@rity initiative has already had a quiet but significant
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effect on the way authorities handle their executive power. It leaves
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considerably less room for corruption and exposes it much more easily
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when it takes place, since any citizen or interested party can openly
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access any questionable acts. This is a scheme of “collective scrutiny”
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that can be effective, since it allows citizens directly involved or
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concerned with an issue to scrutinize it in depth rather than leaving
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it to the traditional media, whose choice of issues often is restricted
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and oriented towards “safe” topics.
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## Challenges
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Although Cl@rity was not designed with financial monitoring in mind, it
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includes various decision types that includes financial metadata
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(such as expenditure, budget, and contract data). From the onset, however,
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the Cl@rity programme has suffered from issues of poor data quality, including:
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* Failure to provide a hierarchy of entities
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* Lack of validation rules for metadata fields and non-mandatory
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requirements
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In reality, these issues have prevented citizens and journalists from
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utilizing the full potential of the Cl@rity program as a platform for
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public financial data.
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## Project results
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Open Knowledge Foundation Greece highlights two major achievements from their data quality review and proposals:
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1. For the Cl@rity programme, substantial improvements have been
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implemented by the end of 2012. These corrections included changes
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of significant importance to journalists and CSOs, such as improving
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the quality of transactional spending data.
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2. For a supplementary information system to support the Cl@rity
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program, several suggestions brought forward by Open Knowledge Foundation Greece have been
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admitted to the data architecture. The new system will for this
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reason be more responsive and accurate and will provide a more detailed
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data model with many more metadata fields. The new system is
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expected to be delivered by the end of 2013. The owner of the system
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the [Greek Ministry of Administrative Reform and
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e-Governance](http://www.ydmed.gov.gr/) has undertaken to provide
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the source code of the system through the [European Open Source
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Observatory and
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Repository](http://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/description) under
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a [EUPL](http://joinup.ec.europa.eu/software/page/eupl) licence.
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### Links about reuse of this data
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* A [short video]((https://vimeo.com/46543472)) about researchers at the National Technical University
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of Athens and Students of WebScience and active members of OKFN
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Greece from the University of Thessaloniki
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* PublicSpending.gr (currently unavailable due to maintenance), also
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documented in [this academic
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article](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2193600)
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* [http://greekspending.com/](http://greekspending.com/)
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