Open Spending Data Structure: Ideas and Suggestions

OpenSpending
21

Denormed functional classification

Yes ok, I get that this is common, and I checked out the UK CRA data. The current draft of OSEP-04 can handle one level, or when the data is normalised, a node in a tree see here. I guess to support this type of denormed hierarchy we will need to introduce both a dedicated new UX pattern for this in the data loader, and, a new pattern on the attribute group in OSDP. For example, what is currently this:

"function": {
  "id": "budget_tree/id",
  "title": "budget_tree/title",
  "description": "budget_tree/summary",
  "cofog": "budget_tree/cofog_code"
}

In the case of denormed hierarchies (of any type, not just functional classification), might become:

"function": [
  {
    "id": "budget_tree/id-1",
    "title": "budget_tree/title-1",
    "description": "budget_tree/summary-1",
    "cofog": "budget_tree/cofog_code-1"
  },
  {
    "id": "budget_tree/id-2",
    "title": "budget_tree/title-2",
    "description": "budget_tree/summary-2",
    "cofog": "budget_tree/cofog_code-2"
  },
  {
    "id": "budget_tree/id-3",
    "title": "budget_tree/title-3",
    "description": "budget_tree/summary-3",
    "cofog": "budget_tree/cofog_code-3"
  }
]
22

Representing government entities

Personas

Data producer: One who has data to load into OpenSpending
Data consumer: One who uses OpenSpending to interact with and discover spend data

User stories

  • As a data producer, I want a structured way to declare if my data is that of a government, including the level of government, and the type of data (eg: a budget), so that my data can be used by data consumers who are specifically interested in government spending, and these users can associate my data with other data packages that have the same properties
  • As a data consumer, I want a way to find data on OpenSpending by filtering/searching by region, place (country), administration type (national, regional), so that I can access data from a particular region/government
23

Classification schemes and types

  • As a data producer, I want to have a structured way to declare economic classification of my data, in addition to functional classification, so that I can tell unique stories with the data that are not possible via functional classification
  • As a data consumer, I want to look at a budget via economic classification if it exists for that budget, so I can get a cross section overview of things like salary expenditure, or interest rates on existing loans, as a percentage of the total budget.

References:

24

OSDP has a “direction” attribute, which is the same as “type” in BDP.

Previously, cases have been made for “type” consistency at both resource level (BDP) and package level (OSDP).

Real data often does not mach this expectation.

eg:

Also see comments I made on BDP here, and comments from @pudo here.

25

I’m late to this party, but:

  • As a data consumer, I want to progressively dive into a dataset by aggregating it initially at levels I’m familiar with (federal departments) before discovering the internal structure of those departments.
  • As a data storyteller, I want to use hierarchies in the visualisations that I build.

Example:
https://public.tableau.com/profile/steve.bennett#!/vizhome/AusBudget2015-16/AustralianFederalBudget2015-16

1 Like
26

@stevage would you mind adding this as an issue on the Fiscal Data Package issue tracker? I"ll also add user stories there too on the thread. I’ve also got some ideas on how we might add it, so it would be good to present there all in one place.

27

Done: Hierarchies for organisational structure, functional classifications, ... ? · Issue #55 · openspending/fiscal-data-package · GitHub

2 Likes