[OpenSpending] spendingdata.org: Developing a standard for transaction-level spending data

[Chris Taggart]

Friedrich
Great idea. Couple of points/suggestions:
1) Might be good to have a couple of sample files or transactions up there
to show with some real data
2) I think it's important to distinguish between transaction data and
non-transaction data (the intro page mentions contract spending). Contract
spending could mean lots of different things, but I'd take it to mean, more
or less, a potential obligation to spend a sum based on a signed contract,
essentially an accrual, which is a completely different sort of accounting,
and in fact potentially it is actually a commitment or perhaps a liability
(I am not an accountant, but have come across this sort of thing before).
It might be that there's a set of terms that could be used for accrual
accounting (accounts), and cash accounting (transactions) and also
commitments (contracts, planned spending), but I think it would be good to
recognise in the intro we're talking about different things.
3) There are also various e-procurement vocabularies that may (or may not)
be relevant, e.g http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Procurement_Vocabulary

Chris

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On 9 July 2012 22:01, Friedrich Lindenberg <friedrich.lindenberg at okfn.org>wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> we've been considering the idea of creating a reference format for
> spending data for a while now. It's a good idea: what if many
> governments - on different levels - were to release their spending in
> a uniform, compatible format? Governments would have it easier to
> figure out how to their publish data. Techies like us could begin to
> build tools for analyzing the data that truly scale. NGOs and think
> tanks could easily see what's in the data, without having to embark on
> a technology project first. Eventually, the data could even become
> comparable across different environments, raising many interesting
> questions.
>
> We'd like to invite you to brainstorm with us: how would a simple,
> pragmatic standard for spending data look? Through the recent GIFT
> report, we've surveyed lots of similar initiatives [1] and collected
> some rough ideas. Building on this, we're now looking for your support
> in contributing your ideas against this straw man:
>
> http://openspending.org/resources/standard/index.html
>
> It's by far not concrete enough to actually build a validator ("rough
> consensus and running code"), but with all of your help I'm hoping
> that we'll get there quickly. If we can build support for such an
> idea, we can convince some of those countries who have already opened
> up their data to use better formats to do it; while giving concrete
> guidance to those who are only now starting to share their spending
> data.
>
> Best wishes,
>
>  - Friedrich
>
> [1] http://openspending.org/resources/gift/index.html
>
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