What are the sorts of questions that you would like the system to answer?

[Jennifer Bell]

What are the sorts of questions that you would like the system (the
database and user interface) to answer?

Some top-running ones are:

- Who are the top spenders / civil servants (of course, this has to be
balanced against their role – some positions require spending a lot of
money)
- What are the long term spending trends?
- What is the spending per person, and per department
- How do different departments compare?
- How do departments compare before / after a shuffle

Are there any others?

[Marc]

[Marc]

Where do you expect to get your data from ? Stats Canada ?

[David Akin]

Statistics Canada does not track spending by civil servants or political staff.

Ministers, their exempt political staff, and senior civil servants
must declare their travel and hospitality expenses once per quarter.
That declaration is posted on each department or agency's Web site.
Treasury Board has collected the list of links all in one place
[http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pd-dp/gr-rg/index_e.asp] but, generally
speaking, look for the "Proactive Disclosure" link at each site.

While this is a good first step, the only way you can start assessing
spending on a government-wide basis is by downloading, one by one,
quarter by quarter -- the HTML tables at each department's Web site.
Even then, you don't get the detail underlying those tables, let alone
receipts etc.

Spending on travel by all other employees of the federal government
can be retrieved at the department level. Not sure if there's
information online about this. Perhaps in Estimates or the
Departmental Performance Reports?

To go back to Jennifer's question: One thing I'd like to do is compare
spending by Position -- to compare travel by Finance Minister against
travel by Agriculture Minister or travel of Chiefs of Staff against
travel for Directors of Communication ... and so on.

On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 4:30 PM, Marc <marcg...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Where do you expect to get your data from ? Stats Canada ?
> >
>

--
David Akin
-------------------
http://www.davidakin.com

[Jennifer Bell]

That can be done.

If you're wondering what's happening with this group, I'm working on
getting the next version visiblegovernment.ca website up, that will
allow people to

- submit project ideas
- show support for tool ideas
- collaborate on use cases for the tool
- donate to see the tools implemented
- bid for implementation

The discussions here will seed the process.

I'm also working on looking for 'large donor' funding sources for
transparency tools in general to get things rolling.

BTW: I just got back from Personal Democracy Forum in New York. It
was brilliant. See the blog at visiblegovernment.ca.

Jennifer

On Jun 22, 5:07 pm, "David Akin" <jda...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Statistics Canada does not track spending by civil servants or political staff.
>
> Ministers, their exempt political staff, and senior civil servants
> must declare their travel and hospitality expenses once per quarter.
> That declaration is posted on each department or agency's Web site.
> Treasury Board has collected the list of links all in one place
> [http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pd-dp/gr-rg/index_e.asp] but, generally
> speaking, look for the "Proactive Disclosure" link at each site.
>
> While this is a good first step, the only way you can start assessing
> spending on a government-wide basis is by downloading, one by one,
> quarter by quarter -- the HTML tables at each department's Web site.
> Even then, you don't get the detail underlying those tables, let alone
> receipts etc.
>
> Spending on travel by all other employees of the federal government
> can be retrieved at the department level. Not sure if there's
> information online about this. Perhaps in Estimates or the
> Departmental Performance Reports?
>
> To go back to Jennifer's question: One thing I'd like to do is compare
> spending by Position -- to compare travel by Finance Minister against
> travel by Agriculture Minister or travel of Chiefs of Staff against
> travel for Directors of Communication ... and so on.
>

[Marc]

Thank you, Jennifer.

I think a discussion forum should be added to VisibleGovernment.ca as
well.

Back to the Government Expenses topic. I think that while such things
as travel and hospitality expenses should be monitored, it would be
better to prioritize larger issues first, such as how much money is
spent by department, what it is spent on, and what services are
produced from that.

[Jennifer Bell]

I agree, all government expense information should be available online
in a format that can easily be browsed and compared. The hospitality
and expense data set was chosen as a pilot because the data already
exists in a digital format, and only needs a small amount of massaging
to turn it into a functional database that can be searched and
visualized.

The goals behind the pilot are to:

1. gain publicity for the open government data concept
2. start to develop an open toolset for analyzing the data, which can
be re-used in other contexts

Jennifer

[Scott Hennig]

While they are not currently available, you can ATI the receipts for
all expenses reported on the site (with the exception of Ministers'
receipts). I have filed a handful of these after stumbling across
some interesting expenses on the current site. My hope would be that
eventually the site would generate enough ATI's of expenses that scans
of the recepits would be available as well.

In fact, it might be a good idea to have an option on the final site
next to each individual expense to "donate an ATIP to
visiblegovernment.ca." Meaning, if an individual was on the
visiblegovernment expense site and was interested in actually seeing
the receipts of a lunch expense incurred by a Deputy Minister (for
example), they could click the donate an ATIP button, pay $5 to
visiblegovernment through paypal, and an automatic ATI form would be
generated and sent indicating which expense receipts were being
requested. When the request came back, it would be scanned and posted
as a pdf next to the expense, with an e-mail notice being sent to the
person who donated the receipts.

On Jun 22, 3:07 pm, "David Akin" <jda...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Statistics Canada does not track spending by civil servants or political staff.
>
> Ministers, their exempt political staff, and senior civil servants
> must declare their travel and hospitality expenses once per quarter.
> That declaration is posted on each department or agency's Web site.
> Treasury Board has collected the list of links all in one place
> [http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pd-dp/gr-rg/index_e.asp] but, generally
> speaking, look for the "Proactive Disclosure" link at each site.
>
> While this is a good first step, the only way you can start assessing
> spending on a government-wide basis is by downloading, one by one,
> quarter by quarter -- the HTML tables at each department's Web site.
> Even then, you don't get the detail underlying those tables, let alone
> receipts etc.
>
> Spending on travel by all other employees of the federal government
> can be retrieved at the department level. Not sure if there's
> information online about this. Perhaps in Estimates or the
> Departmental Performance Reports?
>
> To go back to Jennifer's question: One thing I'd like to do is compare
> spending by Position -- to compare travel by Finance Minister against
> travel by Agriculture Minister or travel of Chiefs of Staff against
> travel for Directors of Communication ... and so on.
>

[Jennifer Bell]

Hey! Good idea on the ATI.

Claire actually had that same thought a few weeks ago.

Jennifer