Berlin, November 21, 2016 – Today, the beta version of OpenBudgets is officially released to the public. The Horizon 2020-funded project seeks to advance transparency and accountability in the fiscal domain by providing journalists, CSOs, NGOs, citizens and public administrations with state-of-the-art tools needed to effectively process and analyze financial data.
For the beta version, we have developed tools around the three pillars of the project: data analytics, citizen engagement, and journalism. In the realm of data analytics, we present a time series forecasting algorithm that integrates with OpenSpending and predicts and visualizes the development of budgets into the future. As for citizen engagement, the participatory budgeting interface lets users preview the interaction with the budget allocation process. Finally, the highly praised ‘budget cooking recipes’ website highlights the journalistic value of budget data by listing cases in which it has been used to investigate corruption.
Tools, data and stories will be continuously added and improved over the next months as three large-scale pilot scenarios in the domains of participatory budgeting, data journalism and corruption prevention will be launched to gain further insights. These insights will feed into the overall platform for fiscal data.
OpenBudgets.eu develops tools for the analysis of fiscal data. On the fiscal data platform, users can upload, visualise, analyse and compare financial data. Specific tools will be offered to our target audiences: municipalities, participatory budgeting organisations and journalists. Municipalities can use micro-sites to publish their budget and spending data on designated websites, participatory budgeting organisations can use decision-making and monitoring tools to support the process, and journalists are provided with tailor-made tooling and tutorials.
OpenBudgets.eu has launched a call for tender for the improvement of transparency and modernization of budget and spending data directed at municipalities, regional governments, and qualified legal entities. Find more information on the website.
OpenBudgets.eu is a EU funded project run by an international consortium of nine partners:
Open Knowledge International, Journalism++, Open Knowledge Greece, Bonn University, Fraunhofer IAIS, Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland, Fundación Civio, Transparency International-EU, and University of Economics, Prague.
Press contact:
Anna Alberts – Open Knowledge Foundation Germany
openbudgets.eu | @OpenBudgetsEU
anna.alberts@okfn.de
Read the blog post on the prototype launch of OpenBudgets.eu: http://openbudgets.eu/post/2016/11/18/OBEU-prototype-launch/
Press releases available in other languages: http://openbudgets.eu/press/
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