Slashdot Mirror
British Gov't Releases Spending Data
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.'"
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.
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*
Bye!