[openspending-dev] Improvement of offenerhaushalt.at

Fri Jun 21 09:58:47 UTC 2013

On 21 June 2013 07:10, Krabina Bernhard <krabina at kdz.or.at> wrote:

> Hi Rufus,
>
> the reason why we don't do it is simply a legal one. We buy the data from
> the statistics office and are not allowed to give them away. So naturally,
> our CEOs would not feel comfortable with putting in the data in a database
> we have no control over (even if it is not visible to the general public).
>

Couldn't we seek forgiveness rather than permission? Plus in your earlier
email you implied that this stuff would be made public over time so in
worst case you could wait until you have this official permission ...

But the situation is Austria is in general quite different already:
> 1) we have a law (Stabilitätspakt) that requires all municipalities to
> publish their spending data in the Internet in a machine readable format
> (starting from fall 2013 where the first budgets of 2012 have to be
> published)
> 2) we have a national data portal http://data.gv.at
>
> So I am quite convinced that it is not going to happen that the
> municipalities will put in Austrian spending data in openspending.org,
> simple because if they release it they will prefer data.gv.at (or - worse
> - publish the data on their websites only)
>
> This already happened: the City of Graz published their financial data
> here:
> http://www.data.gv.at/datensatz/?id=6a6b203b-645d-4876-a2ac-97695f3b8539
> but it's not on openspending. So Openspending should investigate in
> possibilities of automatically transfer published datasets from national
> portals to openspending.org

There's a bit of a confusion here: I'd generally imagine that governments
will publish their spending and budgets on their official sites. We don't
expect or intend OpenSpending (anywhere) to be the primary publication
location. (Perhaps, over time, if we get successful enough that may happen
but I don't think its the starting point).

Rather OpenSpending is the place this gets consolidated in a standardized
fashion. So this setup you describe fits really well with how things can
and should function :-)

This has similarities with OpenStreetMap where a lot of data comes from Gov
of companies but gets pull into OSM and consolidated (obviously data also
gets generated directly for OSM too).

> A list of already published financial datasets can be found here:
> http://www.data.gv.at/suche/?search-term=&katFilter_finanzen-und-rechnungswesen=on&connection=and#showresults

I think having an (automated) pipeline from the published data there into
OpenSpending and then back out to e.g. OpenSpending.at or any other Austria
site would be super useful.

Would you be up for helping make that happen :-) ?

Rufus

> Best regards,
> Bernhard
>
> ----- Ursprüngliche Mail -----
> >
> > Hi Bernhard,
> >
> >
> > Sounds good but I would continue to ask: is there no way to upload
> > the relevant datasets to the central repo at openspending.org *from
> > the start* and then build your site off that data (e.g. pulling data
> > via the API)?
> >
> >
> > (I know this has been the discussion since the beginning but I still
> > have not really understood why that is not possible - OK, so some
> > data needs to be private for a while but that's possible in
> > OpenSpending.org already ...).
> >
> >
> > Contributing the data into a central location while *presenting*
> > elsewhere is the most natural approach and fits well with what you
> > want to do.
> >
> >
> > Rufus
> >
> >
> >
> > On 20 June 2013 16:14, Krabina Bernhard < krabina at kdz.or.at > wrote:
> >
> >
> > Dear OpenSpending community,
> >
> > I have both good and bad news for our Austrian implementation of an
> > OpenSpending portal:
> >
> > Although some of you in the (dev)community for the OpenSpending
> > software have been supportive in terms of reacting on the mailing
> > lists and our idea of (partly) funding features that could be
> > interesting for the OpenSpending core in general, no one has raised
> > their hands and told us to be willing to implement on of the
> > features we mentioned up to now.
> >
> > Additionally, we did not succeed in finding developers in Austria who
> > were interested, besides a small startup in Vienna. They looked the
> > openspending software, but were reluctant to take over the tasks
> > because they had the feeling that the OpenSpending software is both
> > very big and not very well documented and that the effort to get to
> > know and productivley enhance it would be quite big. This is what
> > also collegues from OKFN Germany told us right from the beginning
> > (most of the German projects don't use the core software, just some
> > elements).
> >
> > I don't want to start a discussion on wheter or not OpenSpending is a
> > good or not so good piece of software or is well or not so well
> > documented. Fact is, that time is pressing (we want to release an
> > improved version of an openspending portal for Austria in early
> > October) so we needed to take some decicions.
> >
> > So we decided that we will start from scratch based on a Drupal web
> > site, using some open JavaScript visualization toolkits and build
> > what we need around Drupal.
> >
> > It is going to be an openspending portal with the focus on:
> > - spending data from ALL municipalities in Austria
> > - municipalities being in control whether or not to make their
> > data/visualisations open for everyone
> > - no automatic feature of users being able to upload data and make
> > their own visualsations (but we at KDZ are interested in other
> > public spending data than from municipalities, so come and talk to
> > us ;-)
> >
> > We want to continue our efforts towards making as much public
> > spending data open and convincing as many municpalities (and other
> > authorities) to do so, but we needed our special approach.
> >
> > As soon as we have our site up and running I will let you know and
> > will be happy to cooperate with you in future (e. g. lets talk about
> > how to put the disclosed datasets from our platform into
> > openspending.org then...)
> >
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Bernhard
> >
> > --
> > Mag. Bernhard Krabina
> > KDZ - Zentrum für Verwaltungsforschung
> > Centre for Public Administration Research
> > Guglgasse 13, 1110 Wien
> > Telefon: +43 1 8923492-27, Fax: +43 1 8923492-20
> > Mobil: +43 676 849579-27, Twitter: @krabina
> > mailto: krabina at kdz.or.at - http://www.kdz.or.at
> >
> >
> > - Plattform Verwaltungskooperation:
> > http://www.verwaltungskooperation.at
> >
> > - Open Government Vorgehensmodell
> > http://www.kdz.eu/de/open-government-vorgehensmodell
> >
> > KDZ News: Entwarnung an der Umsatzsteuerfront?
> > http://www.kdz.eu/de/entwarnung-der-umsatzsteuerfront
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Rufus Pollock
> >
> > Founder and Co-Director | skype: rufuspollock | @rufuspollock
> >
> > The Open Knowledge Foundation
> >
> > Empowering through Open Knowledge http://okfn.org/ | @okfn | OKF on
> > Facebook | Blog | Newsletter
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>

-- 
*

Rufus Pollock

Founder and Co-Director | skype: rufuspollock |
@rufuspollock<https://twitter.com/rufuspollock>

The Open Knowledge Foundation <http://okfn.org/>

Empowering through Open Knowledge
http://okfn.org/ | @okfn <http://twitter.com/OKFN> | OKF on
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