[OpenSpending] Formats for government budget data?

Thu Jan 24 15:41:42 UTC 2013

2013/1/24 Peter Krantz <peter at peterkrantz.se>

> 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.
>
>
Nice to see you found XBRL helpful: XBRL fits rather well for governments
due to the fact that several use cases in public administration could be
found.
But I would still take Friedrich's advice, though: expressing XBRL could be
a pain to build and parse.

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).
>

I think both Openspending Data Standard[1] or GFTS[2] fits well here: you
have a definition for breaking down budgets in entities, programmes,
projects, economic classifications ...

What I haven't saw yet is a government publishing expenditure budget
expressed in those formats.
It would be a huge achievement for transparency and accountability.

Regards,

[1] http://openspending.org/resources/standard/technical.html
[2] https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs/reference

> Regards,
>
> Peter
>
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-- 
J. Félix Ontañón Carmona
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