Having data for budgets and spending can allow us to track public money flows in our communities. It can give us insights into how governments plan and focus on programmes, public works, and services. So the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT), along with Open Knowledge International (OKI), have been working on new tools to make this data more useful and easier to understand.
Two of these are the [Open] Fiscal Data Package (OFDP) specification and OpenSpending platform.
The OFDP is a data specification that allows publishers to create a literal package of data. This package includes fiscal data mapped onto either standardised or bespoke functional, economic and administrative classifications. Additionally, the different stages of the budget can be mapped, and other fields that are relevant to the publisher. This seeks to reduce the barriers to accessing and interpreting fiscal open data.
One of the main benefits of the OFDP is that data publishers can adopt it no matter how they generate their databases. The flexibility of this specification allows publishers to improve the quality incrementally. There is no need to develop new software. Having this structured data allows us to build tools and services over it for visualization, analysis or comparison.
The second tool is actually a set of tools called OpenSpending.
This is an open-source and a community-driven project. It reflects the valuable contributions of an active, passionate and committed community.
OpenSpending enables analysis, dissemination, and debates for more efficient budgets and public spending. It allows anyone to create, use, and visualize fiscal data using the Open Fiscal Data Package in a centralized place with small effort.
As part of this collaboration, OKI and GIFT have been working with different government partners to publish using OFDP. But we want to see the adoption of the Open Fiscal Data Package grow even more. This is why we have set up the Fiscal Data Helpdesk to help you in the publication process!
How to engage with the Fiscal Data Helpdesk
Maybe you are already publishing fiscal data through an open data portal? Or maybe you have a platform and want to make it more useful for a larger number of users? Perhaps you have heard about standardization but it sounds complex and you think it might not be for your office? The Helpdesk is around to answer all your questions and support you through the process of getting data up and running in OpenSpending.
There are a few good examples of what we want you to get doing. We’ve worked with the Mexican federal government to publish their data from 2008 to 2019 using the OFDP and OpenSpending to make it easier to access. You can navigate their data here.
We’ve also worked to get datasets from many countries in the World bank BOOST initiative on OpenSpending. Currently, there are data from countries like Burkina Faso, Guatemala, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
In the coming weeks, we will publish some resources and a series of blog posts to give you more information about publishing your data in OFDP and using OpenSpending.
Interested? You can visit OpenSpending or send us an email at openspending-support@okfn.org. We will get back to you to help get your budgets out in the open!
Oscar Montiel is the international community coordinator at Open Knowledge Foundation
