[wdmmg-discuss] Where are the cuts? mini-app

Mon Apr 26 16:49:56 UTC 2010

Hi Richard,

Further to our discussion on Saturday here's an outline for the "where
are the cuts" miniapp. What do you think?

All: On Saturday I talked with Richard and he did a great job of
emphasizing something we're all aware of (at least those of us in the
UK!): the biggest discussion of spending is going to take place
post-election around spending cuts. He suggested specifically that we
should therefore provide a simple way to record (via crowd-sourcing)
and display spending cuts.

Estimated cost is 2d (+/- 2d). Do people think this is something we
should do (I do!)?

Regards,

Rufus

## Outline

url: <http://knowledgeforge.net/okfn/tasks/ticket/342

Post election, there will be a lot of discussion of spending cuts.
There is an opportunity for us to inform the debate. Our aim:

 * Acquire and record information on the cuts. Sources will be
newspaper articles, etc., sourced from the general public.
 * Display this information in an easily digestible form.
 * Ensure this information is widely available by publicising this resource.

== Implementation ==

Would live at wheredoesmymoneygo.org/cuts/ . A little min-app,
independent of everything else. Re-use key and enumeration value
tables, but put editable data in separate "cut" table.

Build a web form. Fields:

 - Entity affected: Index by CRA dept, with an "Other" option.
 - Amount.
 - Source.
 - Date entered.
 - Date Effective.
 - Function: Top-level COFOG.
 - Free-form notes.

Qu: what about duplicates? Don't care at first.

Display:

 - Totals by entity and function.
 - Cuts as percentage of current spending.
 - Timeline by effective date.

Suggested approach:

We could do this using a Google Form. We could then filter the data by
hand (e.g. remove duplicates, assign correct departments and
function). Then we could copy it into our database and republish in
desired form.

TBD: Frequency of jobs done by hand (i.e. service level).

Estimated time cost: 2d +/- 2