How citizens are ensur­ing imple­ment­a­tion of govern­mental spending

Background

Every year, govern­ments draw up finan­cial budgets to chan­nel the use of tax payers’ money in all sectors of the economy. In some coun­tries, detailed reports are also provided how these funds were appro­pri­ated while in other coun­tries, such inform­a­tion is regarded as state secret thus paving the way for corrupt prac­tices. In Nigeria for example, a  closer look at the 2017 budget revealed that sewage collec­tion in a single govern­ment build­ing increased by 765% with any clear justi­fic­a­tion. With the avail­ab­il­ity of open data, start-up compan­ies, journ­al­ists, finan­cial insti­tu­tions and data enthu­si­asts are now able to inde­pend­ently track govern­ment spend­ing. How can this be achieved and how can the process be made more effi­cient and accurate?

Datasets used

Budget inform­a­tion is usually provided in a long verb­ose docu­ment that cannot be easily under­stood by ordin­ary citizens and are not machine read­able for analysis. A data driven company in Nigeria, BudgIT, recog­nized that it can achieve more trans­par­ency for current and planned projects with open data records to support compan­ies in align­ing their strategies with govern­ment spend­ing. To achieve this, data­sets such as histor­ical federal and state finan­cial budgets, infla­tion rates, tax reven­ues, govern­ment reven­ues, debts, loans, and record of actual govern­ment expendit­ure are used.

Advaneo Data Marketplace

Such a large set of finan­cial inform­a­tion are not read­ily avail­able from a single source. Gathering such data will involve an exhaust­ive search from vari­ous govern­ment portals such as ministry of finance, submis­sion of Request for Information (RFIs) from vari­ous other sources. The Advaneo data market­place offers:



Categorised Datasets

We provide over a million data­sets from vari­ous govern­ment portals and global economic data. Each data­set has been processed to ensure they lead to valid access­ible data endpoint and have been categor­ised for easier access.



Closed User Groups

Data mining, sort­ing and correl­a­tion tasks cannot be effi­ciently done in isol­a­tion. The Advaneo data Marketplace provides the option to create closed user groups where prelim­in­ary find­ings or data­sets can be shared first with collab­or­a­tion partners.



Security and Privacy

Financial data could some­time be clas­si­fied as crit­ical data espe­cially if it provides insight to internal invest­ment plans or strategy of compan­ies. The Advaneo data market­place archi­tec­ture ensures data­sets provided by compan­ies remain private to the company as there is no repos­it­ory of such data­sets on the market­place.  Exchange of data occurs directly between a provider and user ensur­ing data sover­eignty and governance by the data provider.

Impact

Tracking govern­ment spend­ing not only provides more trans­par­ency with how tax payers’ money has been product­ively util­ized, but also leads to better budget perform­ance and prevent corrupt prac­tices. The data, which is avail­able on a single data market­place, will help compan­ies to reli­ably plan future busi­ness steps.