[OpenSpending] open finance practitioners/speakers/experts

Wed Mar 14 09:32:18 UTC 2012

Sam

All good questions. I'll leave the first question to others in this group,
but on the second I think the critical thing is linking the spending data
to recipients, and through that to other sources of data. (There's also the
job of categorising the spending types, but because spending data is
transactional, and thus cash accounting, it makes comparison almost
impossible, even if the categorisation).

OpenSpending and OpenCorporates (of which I'm the co-founder), already have
a close relationship to match recipients to legal entities, and these can
act as a nexus for other data (environmental or health & safety violations,
official filings, lobbying records).

Of course there's still a long way to go yet -- although we've now got the
best part of 40 million companies in nearly 50 jurisdictions, there's lots
more to go, and we're also improving the way for joining the individual
legal entities into the corporate groupings, which is critical in
understanding who gets public money, and how. Would be happy to discuss
further, and we've already been in contact with Tariq (and with the World
Bank's INT & STAR teams).

Re the predictive power, I think we're just getting glimmers of some of the
potential. Met with the EPA in DC last month and asked them what the
leading indicators for problems were and the short answer was (at the
moment) not many, and I think in part because of the siloed nature of their
data. I also had an interesting discussion with a credit reference agency
yesterday, in part discussing leading indicators, and my gut feel is that
we have quite a long way to go, because by the time events become part of
the public record (e.g. official filings, violations) they are already
trailing indicators of problems, although they may be leading indicators of
much bigger problems to come.

Hope this helps

Chris Taggart

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On 14 March 2012 03:23, <slee23 at worldbank.org> wrote:

> Hi OpenSpending Group,
>
> Just wanted to see if I might tap into your collective expertise/knowledge
> for a brief moment.
>
> Trying to identify some interesting open finance/spending "data"
> experts/practitioners for an Open Data panel event, around the theme of
> "What's Next for Open Financial Data: Beyond Transparency." I think it
> would be interesting to focus the dialogue around three themes: 1. building
> communities around data (kind of like this Open Spending Group), 2. linking
> data for greater impact/perspective (again like one of this group's goals),
> and 3. finally on the predictive potential of data.
>
> Would love to spur some lively debate, and was curious if you had any
> suggestions for interesting speakers for these themes, a financial/spending
> angle preferred.
>
> Grateful for any input/insight you might provide, and look forward to
> working more closely with the group as well.
>
> Sam Lee
> ______________________
> Samuel S. Lee
> World Bank Finances
> Controller's Vice Presidency
> Knowledge Dissemination Division
> World Bank Group
> 1818 H Street, N.W.
> Washington, D.C. 20433
> tel: (202) 473-9056
> e-mail: slee23 at worldbank.org
> twitter: samuelslee1
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> openspending mailing list
> openspending at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/openspending
>
>

-- 
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http://opencorporates.com
OpenlyLocal :: Making Local Government More Transparent
http://openlylocal.com
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Twitter: http://twitter.com/CountCulture
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