[wdmmg-discuss] Tax Tree and 4iP

Wed Mar 3 21:27:37 UTC 2010

On 1 March 2010 12:33, Peter Tattersall <pete.tattersall at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I was asked to introduce my "Tax Tree" project to the wddmg-discussion list.
>
> The Tax Tree was the winning entry of the idea category of last autumns'
> Apps for Democracy Finland competition. The basic idea of the Tax Tree is to
> display the revenue and expenditure of public sector organisations in the
> form of a tree-like diagram, in which the thickness of each branch indicates
> the amount of money being allocated to the "branch" in question (i.e.
> department or sub-department).
>
> Images of the idea can be viewed here:
> http://www.slideshare.net/ptatters/tax-tree

Very nice idea. The devil of course will be in the detail :)

In terms of implementation I don't know what you are thinking of but
you might want to look at (if you haven't already):
<http://thejit.org/Jit/Examples/Spacetree/example1.html>

> I am currently negotiating with a publicly funded media organisation and a
> government agency here in Finland regarding the programming of a piece of
> software that would generate tree diagrams from raw data files. The
> intention is to make an open-source, free software that could be adapted to
> the needs of many types of organisation. It is presently too early to say
> when such a piece of software will be available.

Sounds great and really good it's going to be F/OSS.

> As well as displaying flows of money in the public sector, the Tax Tree
> could be used to display the organisational structure of public bodies,
> information on public services (the "fruit"), news articles relevant to each
> branch, and public discussion on the allocation of funds. Future areas of
> development include consideration of how the Tax Tree could be used as a
> platform for participatory budgeting and how calculations of Social Return
> on Investment could be integrated into the tree.

Very interesting, esp. re. participatory budgeting.

> I'll send another message to this list when I have concrete details of the
> programming of the Tax Tree software. I will be very grateful for feedback
> and advice of any kind regarding the Tax Tree, and I wish you every success
> with the inspirational wddmg project.

Thanks very much Peter and it sounds like there might be quite a bit
conceptually and code wise we could collaborate on here.

Regards,

Rufus