Following the last status update we have a few exciting news coming up to announce.
The Open Spending team has been working really hard in continuing the Fiscal Data Package standard development by releasing the Fiscal Data Package version 0.3 and we are happy to announce we will release the first public Open Spending Next Alpha version in the next weeks, so bear with us, it’s coming soon!
This release will contain three core features applications that will allow you to follow a simple and unified workflow from uploading your budget data file to visualizing it and search through the existing database. Those three tool are :
- The OS Packager
- The OS Viewer
- The OS Explorer
1 -
The OS Packager is your entry point to Open Spending Next.
It will enable you to upload your CSV file and create a Fiscal Data Package by easily mapping your file to the FDP standard. Describe your file, add metadata in a few clicks and you’re done for publishing and visualizing your budget file!
2 - 
With this App you can produce a vaste range of charts on the fly based on budget and spending data. Treemaps, pie charts, bar charts, maps, line charts, pivot tables, you name it!
3 - 
OS Explorer will allow you to explore all the budget files submitted to Open Spending and be able to filter them by country, format, licence etc.
Communication channels and how to contribute
Any comment, contribution or feedback?
We welcome input from the community on OpenSpending Next. You can contribute to the development process by leaving suggestions and queries in the Github issue tracker
You can always contact the team anytime via these channels:
Right here, in the OpenSpending discussion forum
On Gitter.im in the OpenSpending chat room
Documentation
A documentation platform is also on its way and has three distinct streams targeting different users OpenSpending:
- Documentation for developers
- Documentation for data contributors
- Documentation for end users
We’ll iterate regularly and make sure you have all need here to start working with OpenSpending and budget data!
Future Events
And if you happen to be in Europe in the next month, the Open Spending team will participate to a few international events, host sessions and hackathons to introduce the Open Fiscal Data Package Standard, have some interactive demos and introduction to the tools, present how they can be used to open up budget data and understand different stages and phases of the budget process.
We want to engage the participants in exploring the ways in which groups and communities can make fiscal data more accessible and more impactful.
If you’re around, join us at:
-
DiploHack Brussels a two-days Transparency Camp Hackathon
Friday 29 - Saturday 30 April @ Council of the European Union -
re:publica Berlin Wednesday 04 May @ 15:00 on STAGE 8
@Anna_Alberts and I will welcome you to the session “Why should you care about the budget - An introduction to budget data” -
csv,conf,pre,event, Berlin
Monday 02 @ Spektrum | from 1 PM to 11 PM, @rufuspollock, @Anna_Alberts, @Jobarratt, @danfowler, @liekeploeger and so many more will be there to present the above tools and discuss any Fiscal Transparency topic with you around this Open Data Maker event. -
Transparency Camp, Amsterdam June 1rst
We will host a session too during this Unconference that focuses on open data and new technologies that stimulates open government in an European context. Wanna join us? It’s free and open to everyone! -
Dataharvest, The European Investigative Journalism Conference, Mechelen, Belgium
@pwalsh, @adam and myself will host an Open Spending data expedition at the pre-conference Hackathon on Thursday 02 June
Next steps together
Again, we’re very excited in releasing soon this Alpha version and we can’t wait to collect your feedback, impressions and comments, and explore together how Open Spending can contribute to open up more and more budget data, in a good quality, in a way that is useful for civil society activists, hackers, journalists, researchers, but also to any administration who can adopt the Fiscal Data Package as a standard to publish Open Fiscal Data.
Stay tuned!
The OpenSpending Team