[okfn-discuss] Major new release of 'Where Does My Money Go?'

Thu May 20 09:15:32 UTC 2010

Dear all,

We are pleased to announce a major new release of the Where Does My
Money Go? project, details of which are included below. You can see
the latest version in action at:

<http://www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/>
<http://www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/dashboard/>
<http://www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/data/>

We would be most grateful for any assistance in getting the word out about this!

Also any feedback would be very much appreciated.

All the best,

Rufus

## Putting the cuts into context: where is that £6 billion going to come from?

hashtag: #wdmmg

<http://blog.okfn.org/2010/05/19/putting-the-cuts-into-context-where-is-that-6-billion-going-to-come-from/>

With the UK election over, reductions in public spending are currently
at the top of the agenda. Whichever way you cut it, taxpayers and
public service users in the look set to face big changes. The 'Where
Does My Money Go?' dashboard - a free, interactive online tool from
the Open Knowledge Foundation - will help to make sense of the £6
billion of spending cuts to be announced on Monday.

The project allows the public to explore data on UK public spending
over the past 6 years, in an intuitive way using maps, timelines and
graphs. The latest release includes:

 - A new mini-app called 'Where are the cuts?' which will capture and
visualise spending cuts as they happen.
<http://www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/cuts/>
 - A new dashboard for visualising and exploring spending by region,
type or over time - breaking down the jargon to make it easier to
understand official spending categories.
<http://www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/dashboard/>
 - A new Where Does My Money Go? data store. This houses all the
cleaned-up, nicely formatted data, sourced from many different
government departments, and makes it available both via the web and
and an API, enabling others to reuse, investigate and re-present the
data. <http://data.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/>

In addition to new information about the spending cuts, the Where Does
My Money Go? project plans to represent detailed information from the
COINS database, the 'holy grail' of spending data, which George
Osborne committed to publishing shortly after this election [1].

Dr Rufus Pollock, Economist from the University of Cambridge and
Director of the Open Knowledge Foundation, comments:

"It is crucial that the public are able to understand how they will be
affected by the cuts to be  announced on Monday - which depends on
having a 'bigger picture' of where spending currently goes. We will be
working hard to show the implications of spending cuts as they are
announced and to track speculation about where cuts will be made in
the future. Our project aims to close the loop between public
information on spending and the public."

[1] http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2009/01/George_Osborne_Creating_a_new_culture_of_financial_discipline.aspx