[okfn-discuss] Where Does My Money Go: what should we work on first?

Thu Jun 18 12:38:13 UTC 2009

2009/6/17 Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>:
>
> Nice idea! This is a bit like something I did recently but with
> technology flows [1].

Yes, that's quite a lot like what I was thinking of...

> In terms of implementation I guess the question is what would be the
> nodes? Government departments? Specific projects? ...
>
> Or, to let the data decide, what data on funding flows is available?

I think that the natural node is an account - ideally we would have
balance sheets and income statements for each organization to
work with, and construct a Grand Unified Ledger from there. (On a
side note if we could do this and import it into e.g. gnucash we
could run all of the normal accounting reports that one might like
to see).

Perhaps for the visualization two levels - one where departments,
quangos, etc. are the nodes and then you can select a node to
get a detailed view of its accounts, to drill down to specific projects
for example.

>> I also think the problem looks like a social network immersed
>> in a heat bath, and so can maybe be modelled as a Markov
>> process with transition probabilities derived from money
>> outflows. But what can we learn from and how could
>> we visualize this representation? I'm not sure...
>
> I really like the idea of including the temporal component. PESA
> (which I mentioned in my previous email) has data going back a decade
> or so though they have a special note saying that data may not always
> be comparable.

I'm looking at the PESA stuff slowly - I am surprised by the differences
in nomenclature from what I am used to. I had to look up "outturn" in
a dictionary ;)

Also, thinking about it a bit, the Markov process model is useful
for playing what-if scenarios - maybe a useful planning tool...

Cheers,
-w
-- 
William Waites
+49 30 8894 9942