|
OpenBudgets.eu to advance fiscal transparency in Europe
Berlin, November 10, 2015 - OpenBudgets.eu, a new project promoting transparency and accountability in the domain of public spending, is launched. The Horizon2020-funded project provides journalists, civil society organisations, NGOs, citizens and public administrations with the tools, data and stories they need to advocate and fight for fiscal transparency.
"Democratic political life as we know it is inconceivable without public access to information about public money” says Jonathan Gray, director of Policy and Research at Open Knowledge.
While an increasing amount of budget and transaction data is made publicly available in Europe, different data standards and accounting models restrict its utility. Sören Auer, professor in Enterprise Information Systems at Fraunhofer and Bonn University and coordinator of OpenBudgets.eu: “The heterogeneity and lack of standardization of Open Spending and Budget data prevents many interesting applications from being realized”, such as “the comparative analysis between different cities or regions, to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public spending”.
OpenBudgets.eu aims to solve this issue by developing a platform that will be easy-to-use, flexible, and capable of interpreting previously incompatible types of budget and spending data. The platform’s users will be able to simply upload, visualise, and analyse public budget and spending data to explore and learn stories behind it.
In May this year the project started and the first milestones have already been reached. We are currently seeking the input from its future user groups by actively involving them. The first stakeholder workshop will take place at the end of November in Berlin. The OpenBudgets.eu team invites those who are interested in giving input to get in touch with them.
OpenBudgets.eu is a 30-month project run by an international consortium of nine partners: Open Knowledge International, Journalism++, Open Knowledge Greece, Bonn University, Fraunhofer IAIS, Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland, Fundación Civio, Transparency International-EU, and University of Economics, Prague.
More information:
http://openbudgets.eu
Press contact:
Anna Alberts - Open Knowledge Foundation Germany
openbudgets.eu | @OpenBudgetsEU
anna.alberts@okfn.de | @Anna_Alberts
Office: +49 30 57703666 0
Mobile: +49 176 21370998
|
