[wdmmg-discuss] £495bn vs £700bn

Wed Jul 28 16:14:28 UTC 2010

2010/7/28 Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org>:
> Take it we know about this?
>
> "I was watching a video by Tim Berners-Lee about open data yesterday,
> and in it he was making use of an example that I find relevant to
> this:
>
> http://www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/dashboard/
>
> I did note that it claims it's £495bn spending, when it is actually
> closer to £700bn, so I am not sure how useful it really is."

Yes, we do know about this and it has been much discussed :)

Two issues:

1. Total figure for 2008-2009 on dashboard differ from PESA (e.g. by
25bn for 2008-09). Due to difference in TME and TES. FAQ on this
already.

2. Data for 2010-2011 and possibly 2009-2010 (which are projection
data for our data) is clearly missing a massive chunk of spending
(this is missing in source CRA data). With a bit of examination you
can clearly see this due to Local Authority info being completely
absent (they don't do projections it seems)

For me item 2 is a really big issue. We've discussed various options:

1. Remove these years from dashboard (or system entirely)
2. Put a clear annotation on the dashboard (how?)
3. Correct the data as best we can

We clearly need to resolve this asap. What do people think we should do?

> From:
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/haveyoursay/2010/07/how_would_you_drive_down_the_d_1.html#P98773651
>
> Could be kind of thing to put in FAQ/ask.wdmmg? E.g. what it
> includes/doesn't include that might explain different figures...

Already have some stuff in FAQ. Frankly not sure that is that useful
without integrating info into the visualization ...

Rufus