[PROJECT] Failed Bank Tracker

Working Groups Open Economics
#1

Hi all,

I decided to create a dedicated thread for this project so that it allows us to get our stuff more organized.

I have updated the sheet according to what I believe that looks better/is more organized. However, I’d like to know your opinion. The first tab, named after “Bank Timeline” is the current structure. Personally, I find that confusing since there a lot of banks in that list. So I divided the list according to the year the first suspicion was ever made.

  • Pros: Easier to update for new users (yes, I’ve found some contributions that were misplaced);
  • Cons: Eventually this list will be completely full and it will be really hard to split again the data. However, we can easily create a “part 2” type of document

Please let me know which one do you think it’s better.

Moving on:
As said in another thread, I am aiming to get more active people involved in this group and I find this the perfect project to get some things done. It has all of its basis already done and there is also some touchable results. Therefore, there are some tasks I could really use help to get things done:

  • Active people to frequently update the list;
  • People with enough knowledge (or interested in learning) to analyse what could have been done to avoid the failure - based on laws and management procedures. To accomplish this task, I can help organizing a couple of datasets to be used from Datahub and CKAN, although I think the latest doesn’t contemplate any information on that. On the other hand, being graduated in Bank & Insurance Management, gives me extra (needed) skills to read and interpret this data. Oh, and I’m also aware about where things are usually placed.
  • Search and research about what is needed to get those analysis posted in OE’s blog.

PS: If anyone from any other work group think they have something useful to add to this project, please feel free to let us know!

#2

No volunteers so far? :frowning:

I’ve emailed a couple of colleagues to see if they get interested to join this work group but I’d really need to have some more people to help…

Cheers

#3

I can help visualize it or put together a page to show some of the things that you collected.

I took a short crack at it and made a CartoDB map with a timeline.

If you like it we can discuss how we can go forward with it or what your ideas are.

#4

Hi @mila_frerichs

Thank you for your interest in this project. I haven’t thought about it through, to be honest. In the beginning I wanted to do something that is not feasible for sure. Measuring and calculating mistakes and what could have been done to avoid certain crashes, even though appealing, is really - really - troublesome. We would need a lot of human resources, and unfortunately, we don’t have them for now.

Your CartoDB seems very interesting but some points are out-of-place. At least in my browser (Chrome). This can be useful if we build a map where people can seem points popping out, according to the time but it would be very useful if people could choose the year or period of years on their own. By clicking a specific point, it would pop-out a simple window mentioning the bank that they clicked, time and the reason why. Is that possible? What do you need to accomplish it?

By the way: Feel free to propose anything at all for any project - this one included :wink:
Thank you for your contribution!

#5

Hello @gsilvapt

I updated my map and included a few other things and made a whole website out of it.
Any tips are welcome and any text changes too.

Just let me know. Having fun building it…

http://milafrerichs.de/failed-bank-tracker-map/

Would love it to have it integrated into the workgroup site.

#6

Hi @mila_frerichs!

Your maps looks great! However, make sure all the locations of those dots are located at the actual countries. Saw some of them going straight to the sea.

Well, I’m not sure how can we integrate that in our website, but there must be a way. @rufuspollock, could you give me a hand here and let me know where/who should I bother to get the map on openeconomics.net?

Thank you!

#7

@gsilvapt the spreadsheet you linked to at the top 404s for me. Is this a spreadsheet you created? I’ve tracked down an alternative but it would be to get this synced up. I think this is a great project to keep working on. In terms of embedding I think we could start by actually embedding the cartodb map here in this site (I think that should be possible).

@mila_frerichs great work on the map btw.

#8

Hi @rufuspollock,

Sorry to hear the link is not working. The sheet wasn’t mine, although it was public… So this project is officially down since the owner of the sheet must have deleted it.

#9

Any idea who the owner of the file is/was? Is there another version hosted somewhere else? Anyone got the raw data saved offline?

I was using that data for a research project so I would be very keen to get it back online!! I am more than willing to help out where I can to keep the database online and up-to-date!

#10

I downloaded part of the data. I created a new online spreadsheet

#11

@mila_frerichs great work. I’ve also dug out these two spreadsheets from Google Docs both of which have “Failed Bank Tracker” in the title:

Also, for sake of persistence i wonder and management i wonder if we move to hosting this in a simple csv file in git(hub). I find this very effective for managing data - and we could also data package - see http://data.okfn.org/ for details.

#12

I will be taking care of this soon, although I do not want to compromise with any particular time space.

However, the problem is that it will be harder to participate in this project. On the other hand, banks have not been failing recently, expect the most recent Portuguese case…

#13

I had the chance to have a look at the project again and I find no use in separating everything into csv files, unless you wish to publish them to a dataset. I will be doing this in a portuguese open database, called Central de Dados.

In regard to the original spreadsheet, I find extremely important to preserve its existance. Hence, I created a repository on GitHub, where you can find the original sheet, in .xls format, and their respective tabs converted into .csv files. I believe this is the easiest method for new comers to add inputs to the database. It has been saved in .ods format, so that every sheet reader opens it properly without messing up the formatting.
The repository has all information written in English. Feel free to branch/fork and pull request any changes you see fit - including new banks that have failed throughout time.