[OpenSpending] EU Budget and Spending Contract Research Opportunity

Tue Feb 24 17:28:53 UTC 2015

Hi All,

I wanted to advertise the contract research opportunity below that Open
Knowledge currently have available. If you are interested please email me (
rufus.pollock at okfn.org) including both an approximate quote (or day-rate)
and a short CV or cover letter explaining your qualifications and interest.

All the best,

Rufus Pollock (Open Knowledge)

EU Budget and Spending Contract Research Brief

   -

   Summary: produce a research report on EU budgeting and finances
   -

   Total time for the project: Negotiable - likely around 10-20 person days
   -

   Timeline: Strong preference for delivery by early April (however later
   is possible)
   -

   Output: a multi-section report suitable for publication on the web

Context

There is currently a substantial gap in public understanding and scrutiny
of many aspects of the EU budget and spending. This is a major issue to
address as understanding and accountability of public finances are of
fundamental importance to democracy and public integrity across the EU (as
evidenced by the problems in the recent financial crisis).

The current unavailability and/or opacity of EU budget and spending data is
a significant problem for researchers, journalists and activists who wish
to advance an informed public conversation about public finances in the EU.
Data is either scattered across different locations, available in opaque
formats or hidden deep in unknown EU websites. (For an overview of the
current situation see http://community.openspending.org/research/eu/)
Research Project Brief

Produce a summary and overview of EU budgeting process, key datasets,
availability, inter-relationship, and structure. Produced in a form that is
publicly usable by others including non-experts.

This work can build on and extend existing work such as:
http://community.openspending.org/research/eu/

Specifically we want to produce:

   -

   [Required] A description of the EU budget process (how are budgets set
   and agreed)
   -

      Description and process diagram for the MFF (multi-year financial
      framework)
      -

   [Required] Overview of where money comes from and how mechanism works
   -

      Basic funding mechanism
      -

      Which member states etc
      -

   [Required] Overview of where money flows to. This should include 1-2
   page description of main "funds" and areas of expenditure including:
   -

      Links to (detailed) data sources if any
      -

      Description of efforts to obtain detailed data so far (e.g. FoI
      requests, EU data releases) and their timeline
      -

      Description of decision-making process over expenditure
      -

   [Desirable] Summary of keey research / investigations so far (e.g. FT
   investigation of structural funds, academic research)

NOT required

   -

   Any detailed financial analysis of current expenditures

Other requirements:

   -

   Final report prepared in "markdown" format. (If you do not know what
   markdown is do not worry - it easy to convert from word or similar to
   markdown)

Appendix

This appendix lists some of the key datasets related to EU spending and
budgeting of which we are already aware.

Dataset

Type

Comments

EU Budget - Annual

Budget

Multi-annual Financial Framework

Budget

Financial Transparency System (spending under the EU Commission)

Spending

FTS contains all spending executed by the European Commission

Regional Funds - Structural Funds & Cohesion Funds
Spending

Data on Structural Fund payments are of significant interest to
journalists, but the barrier of entry is currently high as the data is
being published by member states in various formats.

Agricultural subsidies (CAP)

Spending

Contracts (Tenders Electronic Daily)
Spending

TED contains all official EU contracts but also all major major contracts
(greater than 100k) by EU member states. Again whilst important and
interesting (especially  to journalists) this is probably a lower priority
dataset.
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