[okfn-coord] URGENT: 'Where Does My Money Go'!

[Jonathan Gray]

Hi all,

Spoke to Richard Stirling at Cabinet Office earlier. Basically it doesn't
look like we'll get any money - and the original plan was for Cabinet
Office to build project themselves via a contractor.

Fortunately after talking with Richard they've agreed to a few things:

 * the tool will be open source (crucial in longer term!);
 * we can take a leading role with the project, though we won't directly
handle any money;
 * we've got to get back to Richard on Monday with our 'project team', a
rough plan, and a wishlist of where we'd like the money to be spent, so
he can pitch this to the Cabinet Office;
 * they've been speaking to 'Reading Room' and other contractors for
visualisation work, but he's open to suggestions;
 * people they're most likely to talk to about more general contract work
are Harry Metcalfe and Sam Smith (due to track record with project
delivery etc.);
 * general plan would be to get an easy proof of concept with some basic
functionality rolled out ASAP, so he's got something to show to his
minister (Tom Watson).

General notes:

 * I suggested 4 main things WDDMG would be able to do: 'top down'
budgetary breakdown; 'bottom up' analysis (from POV of citizen); temporal
analysis (including change in allocation of money); showing things on
maps. (See my original email below for more detail.)
 * after speaking to senior people at HMT he thinks year to year
comparisons won't be achievable in short term due to changing of budget
breakdown, etc. (he cited 'ethical problems' with this);
 * also problems with assigning geo-spatial references to data ('where'
money is often up for interpretation);
 * he and others are not sure about 'bottom up' use case - where a citizen
with a given income in a given area would be able to see (roughly) where
their contributions go (of course, a non-trivial task!);
 * main thing to focus on would hence be straightforward 'top down'
breakdown, e.g. based on 'red book';
 * main data sources from HMT (cf. Google for 'PESA' + 'HMT'), he wasn't
forthcoming with suggestions for other sources in the first instance;
 * mentioned various ball park figures for expenses, from £1k to £3-4k.

SUMMARY:

I've got to speak to Richard on Monday with details of our project team
and how we'd like to spend the money. He directly asked 'who we'd employ'
if we could get a few days of someone's time.

Possible project team:
 * Rufus
 * Francis
 * Julian
 * Rob McKinnon
 * Me

We should definitely try and speak to Francis, Julian and Rob before
Monday, if this is possible! Any other ideas for people who might be keen
to work on this?

A couple of questions: (1) Are we roughly happy with this? (2) Can the OKF
realistically take this on with its existing (stretched) capacity?

Personally I've got a 40k word thesis, 2 academic talks, at least one
paper due for publication, as well as a possible role in a new journal. I
haven't even started to look at PhD applications yet. I know we're all
pretty pushed for time!

I could, e.g., propose we take a 'back seat driver' type role, and have
input/oversight, but that we don't have resources/capacity to commit much
in the way of time/energy.

Sorry for lengthy email - and have a good weekend! I'm off out!

J.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	RE: [UNCLASSIFIED] Show Us A Better Way - On the shortlist
Date: 	Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:00:46 -0000 (UTC)
From: 	Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org>
Reply-To: 	jonathan.gray at okfn.org
To: 	Richard.Stirling at cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk
CC: 	jonathan.gray at okfn.org, sinead.keller at cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk,
alex.marklew at cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk, rufus.pollock at okfn.org

Dear Richard,

On Thu, November 13, 2008 08:41,
Richard.Stirling at cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk wrote:
> Great - Thanks. Sinead and Alex are handling the comms. One of the
> angles they are looking at is the 'local hero' one with regional press.
> Whereabouts did you grow up?

Ok. I'm not sure if there's anything of note. :-)

Thumbnail bio:

I grew up in Chichester, West Sussex. My mother's a psychiatric nurse. Her
parents were first generation immigrants in San Francisco. My father is a
university lecturer from Glasgow (at the University of Chichester). Both
are children of poor protestant ministers. I went to the local state
school, Chichester High School For Boys. I started A levels at Havant
College - then took a year off to do other projects. I went back to do A
levels at the Chichester High School Sixth Form - and got a place at
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Post degree I did an Open University
course in Social Scientific research and worked in several libraries in
Cambridge. Then I moved to Homerton, Hackney and commenced research in
German Philosophy at Royal Holloway. Now I'm continuing my research - and
move between Berlin, Homerton and Chichester.

> On your idea I have spoken with my policy colleague in HMT and he was
> very keen. We are in discussions with Reading Room (among other suppliers)
> to produce live visualisations. Is there anything in particular you would
> like to see?

I was under the impression that SUABW winners would be given a share of
the prize money to build the winning projects?

One thing that I would really emphasise is that it would be great if any
visualisation work was open source - so it could be built upon, linked to
other material, integrated into other projects and so on. In this sense an
important part of the project would be to work towards an *infrastructure*
for dynamically representing public finance - rather than just a website.
I would hope that one could have URIs that could be linked to other
relevant documents and resources, and lots of attention would go into
figuring out how relevant information can be automatically retrieved,
parsed, aggregated and standardised.

I've thought quite a bit about the visualisations. A few things that I'd
like to see:

 * 'Top down' visualisations of the budget (based on information from the
'red book'?). I.e. seeing how the whole budget is spent - with reference
to regions, relevant bodies, and spending areas (ideally based on, e.g.
OECD/IMF/UN/EU guidelines for budgetary classification, or at least in
line with international standards). It would be good to have a strong
visual identity for different budgetary categories - perhaps with
corresponding icons for 'health', 'social welfare', 'police',
'transport', etc.
 * 'Bottom up' visualisations from the perspective of a given citizen in a
given area with a given income.
 * Ability to see how public money is spent over time. Animated graphs - a
la 'Gapminder' and so on. E.g. pie charts with top level categories
animated to show changes in allocation of finance.
 * Rich in geographic references - so one can see how finance is allocated
on maps.

I'd really like to kept in the loop regarding the project specifications
and so on - if it is going to be contracted by a third party. Could you
perhaps tell me a little more about how this will likely work?

As I mentioned in the project proposal we have a network of people
interested in visualisation technologies whose expertise we can draw on.
Hans Rosling of Gapminder is now on the Open Knowledge Foundation's
Advisory Board. I can also check with Andrew Vande Moere of infosthetics
and Manuel Lima of visualcomplexity to get a more comprehensive overview
of existing work in this area if that would be helpful.

Would it be useful to have a talk on the telephone? You can reach me today
on 0208 986 4447 or 07533 014 604.

Warm regards,

Jonathan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Gray [mailto:jonathan.gray at okfn.org]
> Sent: 13 November 2008 01:27
> To: Stirling Richard -Transformational Government -
> Subject: Re: [UNCLASSIFIED] Show Us A Better Way - On the shortlist
>
>
> Dear Richard,
>
>
> Sorry I've taken a wee while to get back to you! Below are brief
> responses to the request for further information you sent.
>
> # A little bit about yourself;
>
>
> I am a research student in German Philosophy at Royal Holloway and I
> work at a small not-for-profit organisation called the Open Knowledge
> Foundation. The Foundation was founded in 2004 and is dedicated to
> promoting open knowledge in all its forms - 'from sonnets to statistics,
> genes to geodata'.
>
> # How you came up with the idea;
>
>
> For a long while I have been interested in the possibility of using
> maps, timelines and visualisation technologies to make things easy to
> understand. An excellent example of this is Harry Beck's London Tube map,
> which enables anyone to plot a route throught the complex mesh of tube
> tunnels running across the city. I also admire the work of Otto Neurath,
> who was an advocate of Public Information Symbols, and did some pioneering
> work in overlaying graphs onto maps.
>
> # Any aspirations you have for how the idea will be used;
>
>
> I hope the idea can be scaled to offer an intuitive tool that gives a
> fine grained and interactive picture of where public finance is spent
> across the country. My dream is that it could plug into other tools and
> projects which seek to publish, explore and analyse official documents and
> data - and constitute an important contribution to an infrastructure for
> public information.
>
>>> *	Whether you are happy for our press office to contact you about
>>> your story.
>
> Of course.
>
>
>>> Separately to this, is there a contact number that we can use [...]
>>>
>
> Its 07533 014 604 or 01243 774681.
>
>
> Warm regards,
>
>
> Jonathan Gray
>
>
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