[okfn-coord] Fwd: Where Does My Money Go prototype

Wed Dec 9 20:00:19 UTC 2009

We've got funding from 4IP for Where Does My Money Go!! I want to
express particular appreciation to Jonathan whose brainchild this is
:)

Some quick extra background: as per last 4IP related email Dan Heaf
did get in touch a couple of weeks ago. Since then we've been working
to fix up the proposal for editorial meeting today. Couple of relevant
facts:

  1. Our budget (I think) has been increased by 35k or so (to near
100k) in exchange for us including government income (tax revenue) as
well as expenditure in the project.
  2. They indicated that MySociety were already involved in some other
work for them and they didn't see any great need to have them on this
project (I think they are also more confident now about our ability to
deliver). Of course we may still want to work with MySociety but we
didn't do a joint application. I have yet to inform MS of this since
this only was resolved over the w/e (this has been moving fast!)

We now need to start planning pretty getting up and moving on this
given 4IP's (and our) desired timeline to get this done by next
election :)

Regards,

Rufus

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Daniel Heaf <dan at 4ip.org.uk>
Date: 2009/12/9
Subject: Re: Where Does My Money Go prototype (was: Re: Risks & Issues)
To: rufus.pollock at okfn.org
Cc: Tom Loosemore <tom at 4ip.org.uk>

Rufus,

We had our editorial approval meeting this morning. The good news is
that the project is approved.

The feedback from the session that will need to be taken into account
is as follows:

It's imperative from a C4 perspective that this product releases a
beta for the day after the general election
We feel the editorial of the product needs quite a bit of work. The
current beta borrows too much of the language of government and
budgets
We need to ensure that this product appeals to the man in the street
not the normal target audience of politicians and wonks. We would
advise bringing a top class product manager on board
We'd like to think about how you might use ScraperWiki to gather,
clean and store some of the data costs you've provided
Given that 2010 (onwards) will be the year of cuts we'd like to find a
way for the user to simulate what happens to the model if they change
certain things. Have you seen: http://www.trefis.com/home?from=icon

Much to discuss but overall a big step forward today. The next steps are:
1) We need to finance approval. We'd like to do this before Christmas
and working on diaries
2) We'll need to find time to discuss how to take in some of these
changes. I know you are seeing Tom on Friday and I'm sure he'll
discuss with you.
Thanks,
Dan