[wdmmg-discuss] COINS contract

Wed Mar 31 19:16:36 UTC 2010

On Wed, 31 Mar 2010, Julian Todd wrote:

> The budgetary process within the government represents the real
> exercises in power, so they're not going to let us anywhere near that.
> What we are demanding to know is the outcome.  Where is the money
> spent?  This is not the same as the budget allocations...

Yes, agreed, the spending has been my focus in what I've asked for.

> To allocate the money next year on a rational basis, the COINS system
> takes in the spending records from last year in order to inform the
> allocations.  We need to intercept those records, so far as they
> exist.

These records make up the CRA. We've made pretty good progress in getting 
more detail than is in the CRA. We have the most detailed level of 
spending in COINS -- that is 14,000 unique spending categories, compared 
to the 1,767 categories published in the CRA. I have a print out of these 
categories, so any help scanning would be appreciated.

The remaining challenge is to get spending associated with those 
categories, but I'm in a conversation with my contacts at the Treasury 
about the best way to do this (as this failed 
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/program_objects_and_their_aliase#incoming-78127)

Also, each department keeps their own accounts, so I'm working my way 
through departments finding more about their system e.g. The Department 
For Work And Pensions : 
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/schemas_of_the_two_departmental#incoming-77662

> I'm also hoping for circulation of money measurements.  For example,
> if the government spends £100k on salaries, it gets 30% of the money
> refunded through income tax.  If it spends it on imported goods, that
> money does not come back.

Yes we should be able to work this out from the data government income 
data and the spending data we gather.