[OpenSpending] Using Open Spending and Revenue Data to Assign Credit Scores to Local Governments

Wed Jul 3 14:26:33 UTC 2013

My interest in the OpenSpending project was triggered by the desire to
create a more transparent alternative to government credit ratings.
Utilizing a grant from the state of California, my group gathered fiscal
data for 260 cities in the state, created a credit scoring model and
computed scores for this universe.  The modeling approach is described in a
working paper at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2258801.
The data and initial scores have been published on the web at
http://www.publicsectorcredit.org/ca.

We will publish an additional model after the peer review process concludes.

I believe that layering models like these on top of the open spending data
will make this information more compelling.  To be consistent with the
vision of OKFN, such models should be fully transparent.  In our case, we
published the model in an Excel workbook available on the web site.

Marc Joffe

Public Sector Credit Solutions

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