[wdmmg-discuss] CRA 2010: progress report [was: CRA 2010: description and questions]

Thu Aug 19 00:20:49 UTC 2010

> Ok. But we do seem to have the HMT Functional specification for
> all of them. This seems very similar to the COFOG 2. Could we
> use that? It would mean a new mapper, as you were
> saying in IRC.

I think the HMT Functional classification is almost entirely the same
as COFOG1, alas.

The exceptions are categories 1 and 4, which are slightly different -
but still don't contain enough information to guess COFOG2.

The "HMT Sub-Functional Classification" is the Treasury's equivalent
of COFOG2, and that's only in Table 9.

I've been staring at this for a long time today, though, so I may be wrong... :)

>> We don't have to lose COFOG1, but I think we do have to lose the
>> COFOG2 codes in Table 9, because it's either that or the regional
>> information.
>
> This is the part I don't understand. Why do we have to
> make a choice between this and the regions? Can't we keep
> all of it? If we guess the COFOG 2 from the FS then we have
> everything we need. For the purposes of generating the
> CSV version of the data, I would suggest just leaving the
> "subfunction" column blank where the data comes only
> from table 9 and let the loading machinery fix it. In my
> opinion the CSV should be a straight transcription of the
> XLS as far as possible.

As above, I don't think we can guess COFOG2 from the FS. It only tells
us COFOG1, which we have anyway.

So we just have to set the COFOG2 as 'Local authority' in the loader,
and lose the COFOG2 information that we have in Table 9.

> There are also two columns I notice are being dropped
> in the CSV reader - "ID or non-ID" (what does this mean?)
> and the central/local government or public corporation
> column... That might be useful otherwise for classifying
> entities and government departments. See other thread
> about the lack of good information on this.

Yep, I thought I might add these as keys, as well as the HMT
classifications as new keys. The more information the better, right?
:)