[OpenSpending] open finance practitioners/speakers/experts

Wed Mar 14 11:30:59 UTC 2012

Hey Sam,  

thanks for sending these topic ideas. Two comments:

Re (1, Communities): I'm not sure whether this is about building new communities. Communities about data have a particular weird smell of self-reference; what this is really about is connecting to those existing groups that are affected by the knowledge in the data but lack the skills to process/use it. The ideal is of course that they already exist and are well-organized (such as traditional watchdog groups and similar things), but I think the more fun ones will be those that haven't properly assembled yet (e.g. Facebook groups on medical malpractice?).  

Re (2): I agree with Chris that there is a lot of power in linking to other data, especially suppliers (and, of course, physical space and information on those affected on the ground. With the UK now privatizing police stations, public spending really is where government hands over responsibility for managing public life to private suppliers).  

As a techie, I would imagine a next stage of open (finance) data to see the emergence of another level of tools that layer on top of things like OSM, OpenCorporates, OpenSpending, the WB Finances and Econ Indicators etc. to present you with a task-specific workbench for combining data from different sources. These things will be very task-specific and made especially for journalists, policy people or whoever they're aimed at - probably not primarily "citizens". We (i.e. OpenSpending) cannot provide these kinds of services, because it would essentially mean pulling in … all other data on reserve. You can already see the various visualization-as-a-service services (e.g. MapBox), but thats just one aspect. If linked data worked, this is where it would happen - but as it stands I think it'll be mostly messy data mergery.  

Cheers,  

 - Friedrich   

On Wednesday, March 14, 2012 at 10:32 AM, Chris Taggart wrote:

> 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  
>  
> -------------------------------------------------------
> OpenCorporates :: The Open Database of the Corporate World http://opencorporates.com
> Blog: http://blog.opencorporates.com
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/OpenCorporates
>  
> OpenCorporates is published by Chrinon Ltd, a company dedicated to improving and publishing public data under an open licence that allows and encourages reuse, including commercially. Registered in England, number 07444723
>  
>  
> On 14 March 2012 03:23, <slee23 at worldbank.org (mailto: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 (mailto:slee23 at worldbank.org)
> > twitter: samuelslee1
> >  
> >  
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> --  
> -------------------------------------------------------
> OpenCorporates :: The Open Database of the Corporate World http://opencorporates.com
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