Some questions about quality of input data

[joergreichert]

We (some people from Code for Germany) had a discussion about your project and wonder if you could lobby for better input data. Berlin seems to still provide that data as a XLSX file without documentation. So no advancement in direction to more structured, semantic (even linked) OpenData at the moment.

Have you also consider to use a different workflow in the UI? At the moment it's same workflow designed in OffenerHaushalt at 2012?

Had you had a look at things like https://specs.frictionlessdata.io/fiscal-data-package/#introduction and consider this as an interopable format for the data (e.g. as reexport from the app)?

[tsboter]

Hey @joergreichert thank you for the suggestion! We considered several different UI approaches during our (very short) design & development sprint, but came back to this visualization as the alternatives haven't been clearly supperior to the established one. We would've been happy to include many more features and spend more time with the project, though.

Having said that we're soon announcing our 3rd developer meetup at the CityLAB and we plan to do a coding session with the Haushaltsdaten project. We plan to select a feature or two from our issues backlog. It would be really cool if you're attending too, maybe we can implement or at least start working on the data format suggestion together. Cheers!

[joergreichert]

Hey @tsboter (wow AI is already that advanced to answer automatically), thanks for clarification.

Yes, working together on a data format suggestion would be cool.

I would also like to see to get it combined with initiatives like Participatory budget (Lichtenberg already has one ) and district budgets.

I think this could be even more engaging than only look at the data ex post.

Still visualisations should always allow to trace how money was allocated.

There also some other projects worth a look:

• https://offenerhaushalt.at
• https://cityvizor.cz/landing

[m-b-e]

Hi @joergreichert, first of all thank you for your input, our work benefits from the feedback of the community, so we really appreciate it! I work with the Open Data Informationsstelle (ODIS), who coordinated this project. The website is an outcome of a week-long sprint we organized together with the Senate Department of Finance, and our colleagues at the CityLAB, with the aim of spreading awareness of the underlying open data set. Due to the limited time and resources, a more thorough overhaul of the way the Senate reports and publishes data about its budget was beyond the scope of this particular project. The Senate developed the current data format in cooperation with the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, which already marked a great leap forward in terms of machine readability.

Having said that, as part of our team's mission to advance open data practices in Berlin, we develop a suite of resources, and info materials for public administration. We have recently begun to make linked open data one of our areas of interest, so we are looking into developing resources related to this, and will definitely consider aspects such as the frictionless data standard in cooperations moving forward! Should you have any applied examples, resources, or suggestions, please feel free to get in touch with one of us or send us an email anytime: odis@ts.berlin.

[Esshahn]

@joergreichert we haven't announced the meetup yet, but have settled on a date, which is November 23 at 19:00. We would be happy to welcome you at the CityLAB then

[ff6347]

Hey @tsboter (wow AI is already that advanced to answer automatically), thanks for clarification