OpenSpending is one of Open Knowledge International’s current projects. It is a free and open platform for citizens looking to track and analyze public fiscal information globally.
Last month we started a series of monthly updates covering OpenSpending. Read below for activities and highlights for the month of November.
##Three new pilot partners joined the Open Fiscal Data Package efforts
We are currently working to implement the Open Fiscal Data Package in three new countries: Croatia, Uruguay and Guatemala. In September, Mexico became the first country to endorse the Open Fiscal Data Package. We’re inviting the fiscal community at large to join the efforts and to make use of the new OpenSpending tools!
##Updates from the community
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On November 21, the beta version of OpenBudgets was 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. Click here to read more.
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Code for South Africa launched https://municipalmoney.gov.za/, a New Municipal Money project for South Africa, in partnership with the National Treasury. This is a step forward in collaboration with government. Code for South Africa’s goal is to empower citizens to hold their municipal officials to account. The focus of the portal is on municipal financial performance. It is partly built on the babbage engine being used by OpenSpending. Read more in the blog post.
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At the end of October a team led by OK Finland’s Jaakko Korhonen held a pitch using OpenSpending for high-ranking Finnish Government officials in “Hack the Budget 2016,” a competition organized by Open Knowledge Finland (OKFFI) and the Finnish Ministry of Finance. See their presentation here in Finnish, and English. Blog post here.
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On subsidystories.eu
In order to increase transparency of EU-Funds by unravelling how the EU funds are spent at the local level, OKDE and OKI/OpenSpending are currently working on a project that aims to bring all this data together on one platform. This platform is especially aimed at journalists to give them an overview how subsidy money is being spent within the EU and among EU member states. We will keep you posted on the progress of this project which will officially launch at the beginning of 2017. -
OKDE and OKI working on fiscal data projects more closely
Announcement: OKI and OKDE will collaborate more closely on fiscal transparency projects. During the past year, OKI and OKDE have already worked on several projects on fiscal transparency together, like for example on openbudgets.eu. OKI with the OpenSpending project and the OKDE team implementing several projects around the German and European fiscal data, will join forces to present budget and spending data to the people more effectively.
##Recent blog posts
- What is the Open Fiscal Data Package? The OFDP is part of our work towards “Frictionless Fiscal Data” where users of fiscal information – from journalists to researchers to policy makers themselves – will be able to access and analyze government data on budgets and expenditures, reducing the time it takes to gather insights and drive positive social change. The OFDP was developed by Open Knowledge International, GIFT and the World Bank.
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Turning data into action: what we learned from conducting social audits on public housing communities in Malaysia: The Sinar Project in Malaysia is exploring ways of making critical information public and accessible to Malaysian citizens. The project is supported by the Open Data for Development (OD4D) programme and has been run in collaboration with OpenSpending at Open Knowledge International.
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Check out these spending stories around fiscal data
The budget cookbook: http://www.cookingbudgets.com/
http://www.thefootballtax.com/
##(announcement) We’re closing the old mailing lists
We are migrating from the old mailing lists (openspending@lists.okfn.org, openspending-dev@lists.okfn.org) to the OpenSpending category on the Open Knowledge Forums: OpenSpending - Open Knowledge Forums. Read the full announcement here: We're closing the old mailing lists and see a tutorial on how to use the Forum here: How to use this forum
##(invitation to sign up) Learn about OpenSpending and upload your data
OpenSpending has been revamped this year and we would like to make sure that the fiscal community is on the same page with the updated tools. We’re organizing upload sessions with all interested parts. Did you upload fiscal data to the new OpenSpending platform yet? Learn how to use next.openspending.org by signing up for an upload session.
Do you have any updates for the community? Contribute a blog post on open fiscal topics. You can post it directly to Posts - Open Knowledge Forums, or let us know at victoria.vlad@okfn.org.