British Gov't Releases Spending Data 89
An anonymous reader writes "In a move sure to have transparency activists salivating, the UK government has released some 195,000 lines of data detailing its financial outgoings. The BBC reports that 'All spending of more than £25,000 made between May and September was published — in line with a pre-election commitment by the Conservatives — although some departments also published spending over £500. People are being encouraged to pick through the enormous quantity of online information to spot waste and hold ministers to account.'"
Re:Is to much data a good thing (Score:3, Insightful)
I suspect the most dogmatic reviewers will be freelance journalists, looking for a good story to sell.
Re:News For Nerds Please (Score:4, Insightful)
Data does not process or analyse themselves! And the UK isn't India, either. When we need some data sifting done, we hire a small number of skilled individuals to write some queries and feed them to a computer, rather than hiring hundreds of Indians to do the work manually.
So this is very relevant to the Slashdot community, since many of us here are data professionals who will be able to perform such analysis ourselves.
Re:News For Nerds Please (Score:1, Insightful)
Pfft, you might want to spend your saturday afternoon playing sports for all I know, but I'm going to be swimming in free data, woohoo!
Re:No one actually checks the data (Score:3, Insightful)
??
The British government is not some obscure website gagging for a mention in the press.
British newspapers love a scandal, and they'll be expecting to find lots.
The best way to keep sheep in line..... (Score:2, Insightful)
is to make them think they're winning.
Always question.
Re:Is to much data a good thing (Score:3, Insightful)
so , in the end, you don't have this utopian vision of the citizenry rising up to the task of rooting out fraud and abuse; you have people like the republicans who claimed Obama was spending 200 million dollars a day yelling loudly about their pet peeves...br? I predict this will be a bad thing all round
I'd take your prediction a little bit more seriously, if you hadn't put knee-jerks about Koch brothers or the Republicans in there. Democracy doesn't have much point to it, if nobody aside from the people in charge knows what's going on. Handing ammunition in the form of knowledge to your opponents is a feature not a bug of this idea. They are after all the ones with the greatest stake in finding legitimate problems.
Re:Is to much data a good thing (Score:4, Insightful)
...and it resulted in some crooked MPs losing their seats, others are facing criminal prosecution. [order-order.com] Good. Well done Telegraph.
The Sunday Times did some excellent work on the House of Lords expenses. [timesonline.co.uk] Well done Sunday Times.
Re:Not true (Score:4, Insightful)
While I can't take away from your excellent post, you actually mis-read the post you were replying to, and the person was simply saying that people ignored Wikileaks in the beginning, and that they got better at releasing data in such a way as to make people pay attention. You cite some of the press organisations who were given exclusive access to the data.
Wow slashdot, what happened? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd think the disproportionately large libertarian minded audience in here would have immediately gravitated toward this. I mean when I took my first accounting course, one of the first things that they said was that hell would freeze over before governments start to release their balance sheets. If the data is even closely detailed, we are looking at what I'd hope to be a positive step in how governments manage themselves with the populace.
I never thought that so many of you here would be afraid or ultimately jaded about transparency and openness. *shudder* Maybe Steve Jobs has done a better job on you than I thought possible. *making plans to move into the woods and live off twigs and berries*
Re:Spot the waste (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Gaming this system (Score:4, Insightful)
Similar issues were seen in anti-drug operations in Cuba: once US forces started being shot at, the work was farmed out to MNCs - Multinational Military Corporations, like Blackwater, typically staffed with ex- US special forces, operating from US bases. But the operations were commercial, and any deaths secret. Unpopular operations became secret again, hidden from FOI requests.
There's no US anti-drug operations in Cuba. The government is hostile to the US and wouldn't permit such things.
Re:Wow slashdot, what happened? (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't take a libertarian to like the idea of transparent and accountable government. In fact, it's even more of an issue for us lefties - if you give more money and power to the government, there's stronger need to keep it in check to make sure the money is not squandered and the power is not abused. Letting the public (i.e. taxpayers; those whose money it is in the first place!) audit the expenses is a very appropriate way to do just that.