This is a discussion about the submission for Government Spending / Brazil.
Of the three official sources considered:
- SIGA Brasil (Senado Federal)
- SIOP (Federal Budget Secretariat)
- Portal da Transparência (Ministry of Transparency, Supervision and Controls)
I could not extract data from the one that has been considered by the submitter - SIGA Brasil. I followed the instructions:
- Open the SIGA Brasil website;
- Choose “Acesso livre” (free access) - this opens some business intelligence tool made by SAP with a terrible and counter-intuitive UI;
- Choose “4 - Orçamento fiscal e seguridade - execução” (fiscal and social security budget - execution);
- Choose “4.2 Outros anos” (other years);
- Choose “4.2.H 2016”;
- Choose “4.2.H.1 - Execução das despesas” (execution of expenditures);
- Here there are a bunch of options. Let’s try “(a) LOA 2016 Despesa Execução - por Órgão” (expenditure execution - by public body);
- Now you have to pick manually from a bunch of public bodies. There is no “select all” option. Ctrl+A selects all the page text (not the intended effect). It does not even seem to be possible to select more than one. Double clicking does not add to a list, just makes the name of the currently selected body appear on a text box on the right column, as does clicking the right arrow button. Ctrl+clicking does nothing. Ok, so I select just one (say, “CAMARA DOS DEPUTADOS”) and click the “OK” button;
- A window titled “recuperando dados” (retrieving data) appears. “Nenhum dado para recuperar em consulta” (no data to retrieve in query).
I tried other options, but just couldn’t get data out of the SAP system in any form. Maybe it’s not compatible with the Firefox browser I’m using? I do not know.
In conclusion, I suggest for this source of data to be discarded.
Now let’s look at the other sources of federal government expenditure data. The same RDF dataset that has the budget also has spending information - (valorEmpenhado, valorLiquidado and valorPago fields). However it does not have a date of transaction and name of vendor, as required by the GODI, and instead has aggregated values following a number of criteria. So, let’s put this source aside for now.
Finally, the dataset “Despesas - pagamentos” (expenditures - payments) at Portal da Transparência is very granular and detailed and seems to have all the required fields. Data is available in zipped CSVs, one for each month since they’re rather large after unpacking (the one for November 2016 is 556 MB).
B5. One could argue that data made available in this way is available in bulk.
B6. Data seems to be added every month, however, what is made available is the data for two months prior. Does this qualify for a “yes” to this question? I do not know.
B7. Openly licensed? I’d argue “yes”. Although the website does not say anything about the usage rights, this is just factual data which is does not qualify for copyright protection under the Brazilian Law 9.610/1998 (Article 7, XIII). That effectively puts it into the public domain.
B8. Formats. CSV only.
B9. Ease of use. Quite easy. Certainly the easiest among the three listed official sources. Data is just three clicks away, download & unpack a CSV, and you’re good to go.