[OpenSpending-discuss] Giving some feedback on PESA

Tue Jan 17 13:20:02 UTC 2012

Hello,

Some of you will remember the OKFN project Where Does My Money Go, which 
aimed to show UK government spending before Open Spending came to life. 
The data we used for WDMMG was called PESA and CRA, and like most data 
sets it had some problems and limitations.

That data is now used in open spending here:

http://openspending.org/ukgov-finances-cra

To make PESA better HM Treasury are having a consultation.

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/consult_pesa_national_statistics_user.htm

As the OKF has a good understanding of PESA I wonder if some of you would 
like to help HM Treasury improve their data.

The points I was going to raise/things I'd like from new PESA are:

- a more detailed breakdown of local authority spending rather than
   lumping all their spending together into one big LA group.

- improve the categories of spending so program objects are created
   based on a taxonomy for spending.

- spending by UK region as well as estimated cost benefit by region in the
   Country Regional Analysis.

- for it to be clear what is budgeted spending and what is actual money
   spent.

- guidance on how to recreate PESA from COINS so all the program objects
   are shown for each program object group.

- guidance on how get spending for each government department in COINS.

If anyone has additional points or can expand on these things, especially 
give some ideas for a better taxonomy of spending, please reply.

Apologies to those who have no idea what I'm talking about, you can 
continue with your excellent open spending work!

Lisa