[openspending-dev] Modularisation

Wed Mar 13 09:45:46 UTC 2013

First, though replying to Adam I want to a say a big +1 to Lucy 2c post :-)

@Adam: some examples of questions I think one could answer are:

### Allocation

* What's the rough allocation of government money to specific spending
areas?
* Did the gov spend more on defence than on education last year, or more on
energy subsidies for non-renewables than on renewable energy?

### Who's getting the money

* Which companies got paid the most by the my gov (federal or local) last
year
* Obvious extensions of this e.g. by sector (e.g. for waste removal, or on
mobile service) or by area (in my district, in my street ...)
  * (In a perfect world) - which contracts these payments
* Is company X receiving money from the gov (is company X connected to the
gov in some way ...)

### Are they OK?

* Which local or national govs have the biggest deficits, which may go
bankrupt
* Are govs doing an especially great job
* Does the budget match what was actually spent

I'd also like to OS cover *public* corporate financial info at some point
which add many additional questions we could answer ...

Rufus

On 12 March 2013 21:56, Adam Stiles <adam.d.stiles at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Lucy,
>
> Would love to see the "list of questions that it is possible to answer
> with Spending Data". This could be really helpful for communicating the
> usefulness of OS at the local level.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Adam
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 12:01 PM, Lucy Chambers <lucy.chambers at okfn.org>wrote:
>
>> Hi guys, My 2cts here:
>>
>> We're not going to put effort into supporting deployments over the other
>> important work that we need to get done. Our priority at OpenSpending has
>> always been that a core database is the most powerful thing that
>> OpenSpending has to offer, we'd like to encourage people to put their data
>> into the main database. At the same time - people want something that looks
>> like they want it to, that they can customize etc, that is why satellite
>> sites are important.
>>
>> Lisa and I sat down last week and drew up a list of questions that it is
>> possible to answer with Spending Data. The answers to these questions are
>> cool, but there aren't that many questions, so if we can expose a nice UI
>> to make them easier to answer, I think that is a huge win.
>>
>> My belief (I am informed) that all of these are possible to answer with
>> the infrastructure that we have using the API - if we get to a stage where
>> we are needing to do cross-dataset analysis beyond the basic search
>> function (e.g. 25k and £500 spend) then we may need to reconsider, but I
>> need someone to come to me first with a concrete question that they would
>> like to try and answer and I'll be very willing to listen!
>>
>> To be clear, I think OpenSpending's priorities right now are:
>>
>> * Getting Spending Stories features shipped
>> * Getting a clear UX to reflect our priority that satellite sites are the
>> way to go
>> * Making the satellite sites as easy to create as possible - push and
>> encourage deployments of those. Building out the toolkit for these.
>>
>> When Spending Stories is over in November. We can sit down and take
>> another look at this, I recognise that there are definitely plusses in this
>> model, but from what I understand, this refactor could take 2-3 months, and
>> I'm not sure we have that much time now!
>>
>> Brutal and honest,
>>
>> Lucy
>>
>>
>> On 11 March 2013 10:26, Tryggvi Björgvinsson <
>> tryggvi.bjorgvinsson at okfn.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Þann sun 10.mar 2013 20:42, skrifaði Friedrich Lindenberg:
>>> > On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 8:47 PM, Martin Keegan <martin.keegan at okfn.org
>>> >wrote:
>>> >> The value of specialisation, and the interchangeability of parts, has
>>> >> > been understood since the writing of Adam Smith in the 18th century.
>>> >> >
>>> > I think we need to build on this link! Let's have a panel session with
>>> > Margaret Thatcher and Wolfgang Schäuble to discuss the applicability
>>> of the
>>> > CAP theorem to the European single market!
>>>
>>> Now that's not fair. Martin claimed that the understanding of this value
>>> has been understood since then and you respond with something like this.
>>>
>>> If you want something more relevant and recent I propose you look into
>>> the works of David Parnas, Alan Kay and Larry Constantine (to name a
>>> few). I wouldn't say their findings are detrimental to software
>>> development. I'd actually say that their findings improved software
>>> development.
>>>
>>> > All I'm saying is: are we doing this because we actually have some
>>> concrete
>>> > architectural issue that gets solved or because it turns on our inner
>>> geek?
>>>
>>> From my perspective the reason I want to look into this is because we
>>> have to maintain the code base.
>>>
>>> I understand that you don't want the software to have a good design
>>> because then we focus too much on design instead of doing. There is
>>> nobody proposing that we should halt all development until we've
>>> redesigned everything. I want to look into this as a long-term goal for
>>> the project, where developers keep an eye out for what can be made more
>>> modular.
>>>
>>> I would actually like to hear more from the community, especially those
>>> who actively develop (or want to help develop) OpenSpending.
>>>
>>> Any thoughts?
>>>
>>> /Tryggvi
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Adam Stiles
> 510.280.4862
>
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