[OpenSpending] Formats for government budget data?

Thu Jan 24 13:34:09 UTC 2013

2013/1/24 Friedrich Lindenberg <friedrich.lindenberg at okfn.org>:
>
> I would invite you to have a look at
> http://openspending.org/resources/standard/index.html which is some specs
> for plain CSV that we've been working - the goal is basically to make
> something fairly expressive while still keeping it in a form that can be
> used by people with limited technical skill. Maybe
> http://openspending.org/resources/handbook/ch006_types-of-data.html is also
> of interest - some general guidance from a CSO perspective.
>

Hi!

Agree wrt XBRL. I had a brief look at the documentation and it looks
like it fits spending data, e.g. transactions for a specific year. I
have asked for a dump of the swedish transaction database (70 largest
agencies) and will see if I can conver the data.

Maybe there is a need for a similar simple CSV format for national
budget data? Typically that data is broken down 3-4 levels. It would
be great if parts of that data could be harmonized (e.g. relations to
EU funds or contributions to international organizations).

Regards,

Peter