Where Does My Money Go?

Submitted by: Jonathan Gray

Describe your idea. What will you do?

The British public have exceptional access to official documents and datasets detailing the operations of the official institutions around them. UKOP have catalogued 450,000 post-1980 records from over 2000 public bodies. Portals such as Directgov and National Statistics Online, in addition to the plethora of central, regional and local government department websites can furnish the layperson with a vast and diverse body of knowledge. However, the time and effort required to learn where to look for different pieces of information, and how to interpret what is found, may be substantial, and potentially off-putting.

A time-tested way of making large, complex bodies of ideas manageable is by representing them visually -- whether in the form of maps, timelines, graphs, or charts. Visual representations, as aids, range from the exemplary practice of Harry Beck's London tube map to the ubiquitous line graph used to supplement words in a paper or presentation. Visualisations combining different kinds of data are often used in the printed and televised media to illustrate broad patterns and trends -- such as the animated graphics that accompany the BBC's election coverage.

Recent developments in internet technologies over the past few years make it feasible to build an online visualisation service which would help citizens to find, explore, understand and re-use data made available by the government. Instead of visualisations generated by others to illustrate particular reports, data could be displayed in accordance with the interests of the user. Hence the user could see data from their region in national context, grasp the background to specific policies relevant to them more concretely and posit trends and patterns for themselves. The service would allow citizens to navigate through and engage with government information on their own terms by helping them to generate visual representations for themselves, by themselves.

We propose to initially focus on economic data. It would be an excellent basis for such a service for two reasons. Firstly, a great abundance of such information exists -- every government office, department and council regularly publishes their accounts -- and it is difficult to get an overview of where money is coming from and going. So, visual representations would be particularly useful in this area. Secondly, every citizen has economic transactions with the government, whether outgoing in the form of council or income taxation, or incoming in the form of benefits, allowances, loans or grants. So, these representations would have widespread tangible relevance.

What will the benefits be?

Users of the service would be able to see where their own money is spent or where it comes from, as well as where money across government is spent and where it comes from. Existing government transparency would be built upon to help citizens discover their own part in government economic activity -- thereby encouraging them to take a more active interest in, and a more thoroughly informed engagement with, the official institutions around them.

Who will you target?

We will target UK citizens who are interested in how their tax money is spent.

Is your idea linked to a particular town or region?

We will start with a proof of concept in Hackney, London. This will then be extended to include the whole of the UK.

What kind of assistance would you like from others?

As described above, our focus is on analyzing and presenting data. Hence we need as much relevant data as possible to start with. Here we would hope that existing sources of such data, especially within Government, would be cooperative in assisting in us in this task.

We plan to use a variety of open-source tools, and while we do not require direct assistance in using these, we would appreciate advice from developers who have expertise in relevant areas.