[wdmmg-discuss] Fixing the CRA

Sun Feb 21 21:10:05 UTC 2010

I've just had a meeting with Alistair Turnbull about practical things we/I
can do to improve the quality of the CRA data. We came up with a list of 3
actions:

1. The poor descriptions for the Program Object Group (POG) can be
improved by a combination of FOI requesting more detail and meeting
government departments for more explanation on what the POG means. Just to
be clear: the people I know at the Treasury say there are not more
detailed descriptions of POG in COINS.

2. Not all the government departments listed in the CRA make obvious sense
e.g. there is a department called "PC CAPEX" with code "998". So an action
to determine what all the government departments refer to in the CRA, by
talking to the Treasury/looking for this list online etc.

3. With the COFOG categories that are messed-up (I've tried to describe
how it's messed-up in previous emails -- it is quite hard to explain this
in an email), we can use table 5.2 and 5.4 of PESA to map the 'of which:
..' statement to a reasonable approximation of what we think the COFOG
spending categories should be for each item of spending.

Lisa