[openspending-dev] Measuring coverage (was: Re: Data)

Mon Mar 12 09:31:11 UTC 2012

Hey again, 

I think a matrix is a jolly good idea. Pudo, could we try and build one one 
evening this week (Paul and others you are welcome if you are interested!)? 

Lucy 

On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 2:42 PM, Friedrich Lindenberg <
friedrich.lindenberg at okfn.org> wrote:

>  Hey,  
>  
> On Tuesday, March 6, 2012 at 10:36 AM, Lucy Chambers wrote:
>
> Is there any way that we can help Paul with this query? This is something 
> I've been thinking about for a while. Is there an easy way e.g. that we can 
> draw up a matrix or something with time along one axis, dataset along 
> another, then showing e.g. 100% coverage of all transactions over 25k, 
> partial coverage, little -> no coverage? 
>
> Yes, we need to develop a useful way to talk about coverage. Of course 
> this problem is not specific to spending data, but lets try to come up with 
> a local solution first. 
>
> For the EU's data, I'd previously made this Matrix: 
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvoV_cBqwo28dE8wRWV4YzV4QUlKRWpuSTBZaWQyR3c#gid=3 - 
> shall we make a similar one for the UK as well? Of course it would be 
> cooler to get this into OpenSpending itself, but I think we first need to 
> find out what the specific pieces of metadata are that could be most useful 
> to give: 
>
> * Start and end of reporting period
> * Geographical coverage
> * Sectoral/topical completeness (is this only about agriculture?)
> * Reporting bodies providing data
> * Granularity
> * Censorship
>
> This is interesting because we'd end up with a pretty large block of info 
> for many cases. For the UK departments, we'd essentially need to have a big 
> table with every public body in the UK for each month after Nov 2010 and 
> each entry can have a couple of values (exists, incomplete, unparseable, …).
>
> If journalists can't tell what we have, and whether it gives them a 
> complete picture of the state of affairs, then I don't think they are going 
> to report on spending. :( 
>
> Alternatively, could we spin this the other way and get Paul to do a story 
> on how it is impossible to write about spending because of the 
> incompleteness of the data (unless this is our fault...)... ? 
>
> I think its a mixed thing, most of the open data projects collecting this 
> stuff (Chris, and us on a CG level, as well as other projects in differnet 
> countries) have better and more complete data than whats available to many 
> governments. Not sure if a story about the everyday drama of bad gov IT 
> works though, although I'd read it :) 
>
> - Friedrich 
>
>  
>
>
> Lucy 
>
>
>  

-- 
Lucy Chambers 
Community Coordinator, 
OpenSpending <http://openspending.org/> & Data Journalism<http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/data-driven-journalism>
Open Knowledge Foundation <http://okfn.org/> 
Skype: lucyfediachambers
Twitter: @lucyfedia <https://twitter.com/#!/lucyfedia>
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