[wdmmg-discuss] Fwd: Where Does My Money Go Epiphany

Fri Jan 22 19:36:08 UTC 2010

Dear Richard,

I think we are currently thinking along very similar lines. This is
part of the vision for our 'data store'. Very good idea to speak to
Steve and others from OSM community about their technical set up. In
particular we're after versioning for data and, as you say, a way of
bringing together lots of disparate fragments into a single system,
updated and maintained by a community of contributors (volunteers,
experts, official bodies, ...).

Any chance you might be interested in helping with the spec? ;-)

Best wishes,

Jonathan

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Richard Pope <richard at memespring.co.uk> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Rufus asked me to forward this, so I am :)
>
> Richard
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Richard Pope <richard at memespring.co.uk>
> Date: Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 10:31 PM
> Subject: Where Does My Money Go Epiphany
>
>
> Hi Rufus,
>
> I've been away this week on a ScraperWiki code sprint with Francis &
> Julian and, both from talking things over with them, and the work I
> did for PublishWhatYouFund last year, I had an idea.
>
> It seems like the model for mapping money flows, certainly the common
> cases anyway, is fairly simple:
>
> - Parties have a name, address, type etc
> - Money moves between Parties (any individual or org involved) in the
> form of Transactions
> - Transactions have a Date, Amount, Aim (contract/programe) and Type
>
> (capitalisation denotes objects)
>
> It seems that the data we have is patches of patchiness (farm
> subsidies/MP expenses/government programmes/aid payments), we are
> never going to get everything we want and even the stuff that does
> exist is not going to be *everything* that exists.
>
> The epiphany is that this is a very similar set of circumstances that
> the Open Street Map people found themselves in. So rather than going
> after existing sources in chunks, should we instead be building
> something along the lines of the Open Street Map platform and building
> someothing for storing am amassing anything we can get our hands on?
> It would work something like this:
>
> - A data structure that represent the basic types listed above
> (intentionally ignoring the edge cases that people cite to block
> things)
> - A tool fo uploading data to this format with citations as to the
> source of data
> - Moderation tools for checking the validity of data and resolving
> contradictions and merging duplicates
> - A fuzzy way of marking Transactions for reliability
>
> Does this make any sense? Or am I missing the point? Either way i do
> think it would be worth emailing Steve Coast from OSm and asking if he
> thinks there are overlaps in the approach.
>
> cheers,
>
> Richard
>
>
>
>
> --
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> memespring.co.uk
> ++44 7976730458
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>
>
>
> --
> /*
> richard at memespring.co.uk
> memespring.co.uk
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> memspr (aim)
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-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.org

Twitter/Identica: jwyg