[wdmmg-discuss] Wdmmg and the voluntary sector

Tue Aug 17 12:07:41 UTC 2010

Hi all

I'm David and I work as a researcher at the National Council for
Voluntary Organisations. We've been looking at open data and voluntary
sector, and Jonathan very kindly asked me to blog about this on the OKF
blog (which is here:
http://blog.okfn.org/2010/08/02/open-data-and-the-voluntary-sector/). 

He also suggested that I introduce myself and some of the work we've
been doing to this list - I'd be really interested in any thoughts or
ideas you have, and also if there's anything we can help you with. I
should also say I've been following the list for a few weeks and your
work for longer - and it's really great stuff, both interesting and
useful for the work we do.

There's three particular things I wanted to mention:

1) Cuts 

I noticed from an earlier message that you're doing a cuts survey -
we're also doing one for our members & other voluntary groups. You can
see the results of this here: http://bit.ly/vcscutsresults (And the
survey is here: http://bit.ly/vcscuts ). It would be great to
cross-pollinate the surveys somehow - we've been keen to make the
results of this open, hence the spreadsheet. 

2) spending data, COINS, etc

We've been taking quite an interest recently in the spending data that's
beginning to come out of all levels of govt, from COINS to the local
authority spending data, to CLG last week. Our interest in this is for
looking at government spending on charities - which bits of government
give to charities, how much, and what for.

We gather quite a bit of data from charities' accounts on what they say
they get from government, so it is nice to get some data from the other
side. I've found the data released so far quite frustrating from this
point of view though - charities/ the voluntary sector are not usually
separately identified, and so I've had to resort to matching by name to
lists of spending. This produces partial results, but is not perfect.

In part, this is as much about the culture of government as it is about
the data. I'd be interested in thinking about this further, and would be
happy to help try to build in recognition of charities into spending
data if that would be useful.

(I also blogged about COINS when it came out:
http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/networking-discussions/blogs/116/10/06/07/bot
h-sides-coins )

3) our own data collection & presentation

We've been thinking quite a bit about the data we collect (mostly about
where charities get money from and how they spend it), and ways of
opening it up and getting the most out of it. There's an internal battle
I need to win about releasing any data we collect, but I would like to
see a situation where we produce open & usable data on the activities of
charities that can be used by a variety of sources. We're at the early
stages of thinking about this, so anyone who's willing to feed into this
would be really welcome!

Apologies for a bit of a brain dump, I hope this fits into the spirit of
the list.

If you're interested in some of the things we do, the best place to
start might be http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/almanac2010, where you can see
some sample pages from our latest publication.

Thanks

David Kane

Research Officer
National Council for Voluntary Organisations
david.kane at ncvo-vol.org.uk
020 7520 2579
ww.ncvo-vol.org.uk/almanac
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