[wdmmg-discuss] Lambeth Council Corporate Financial Ledger

Wed Jun 9 11:39:18 UTC 2010

Richard, we've made a spreadsheet to help people looking up details of 
their council's spending. It would be great if you could add what you've 
discovered about Lambeth Council :

http://spreadsheets4.google.com/ccc?key=tJSDFiyNSDsxoY2QEYnaMVA#gid=0

Many thanks.

On Wed, 9 Jun 2010, Richard Pope wrote:

> Thanks Lisa, good advice. I'll do a follow up asking for a list of
> tables / training manuals.
>
> Richard
>
> On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 11:07 AM, Lisa Evans <lisa.evans at okfn.org> wrote:
>> Richard,
>>
>> This is great work!
>>
>> I'm at exactly this stage with a number of councils at the moment.
>>
>> I've found that just asking for the data with reasonable redactions (e.g. I
>> don't want individuals council tax payments) doesn't work -- in general the
>> people who manage the system would need to devote lots of time to figuring
>> out what to do.
>>
>> I suggest almost writing the queries you want for them, so I'd ask for the
>> tables from the Oracle Financials and Oracle Procurement and any other part
>> of the Oracle E-Business Suite that may contain the data you want (and give
>> instructions for how they can obtain this). I'd ask for the training
>> materials for using the system so you can really understand the system in
>> the way they do. I would also offer your assistance in understanding the
>> structure of the data and extracting the data, saying you would be happy to
>> meet them to explain what you want in more detail and do all you can to
>> help.
>>
>> Good luck and keep us updated on how this goes,
>>
>> Lisa
>>
>> As the database is Oracle e-business suite, I guess they use
>>
>> On Wed, 9 Jun 2010, Richard Pope wrote:
>>
>>> Can anyone suggest how to progress from this very prompt reply I got
>>> from Lambeth Council asking for details of their spending database:
>>>
>>> http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/details_of_spending_databases
>>>
>>> Which points to this system here:
>>>
>>> http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/ebusiness/financials/index.html
>>>
>>> I want to get at all payments including company details over an
>>> arbitrary figure. I am not interested in individual people's pay (it
>>> includes HR data which I assume means individual payments to members
>>> of staff).
>>>
>>> How should I ask for it?
>>>
>>> Richard
>>>
>>>
>>
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