[wdmmg-discuss] Standards: public bodies publish spending

Wed May 26 14:40:26 UTC 2010

Together with Chris Taggart at Openly Local, we have come up with a list 
of standards we would like to see when public bodies publish spending 
data:

  http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcc9h7b6_56fsgcztdk

I would really appreciate any comments and additions.

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In summary the list of standards is:

  - Standard Coding of time, place, function of spending etc.
  - Fine granularity of reporting.
  - We would allow LAs to publish data using any coding standard they like,
    provided they also publish the mapping onto the standard coding system.
  - We want to see departmental income as well as spending.
  - When a service is bought from another government department we need the
    ID of the other government body.
    i.e. departments must show all transactions with other departments.
  - Contract listing for councils to be tied to council spending.
  - Companies who have provided a service should be named as defined by
    Companies House with company numbers.
  - The raw data must be made available in a conveniently machine-readable
    form, e.g. CSV or JSON or a spreadsheet.
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Many thanks,

Lisa