Author Archives: lisa

Finally Some Answers on Where My Money Goes

Posted on February 4, 2011 by lisa

It’s an innocent enough question: what does the government spend money on? Now, I’m not an accountant and I’m not a statistician and personally I don’t have a political axe to grind, I just want some answers to this question … Continue reading →

Posted in Where Does My Money Go | 4 Comments

Where, in the country, is our tax money used?

Posted on August 25, 2010 by lisa

One of the aims of ‘where does my money go?’ is to follow the path of our money from the point it is handed to the government as tax, to the point it leaves their hands to give benefit to … Continue reading →

Posted in Where Does My Money Go | 1 Comment

Keeping track of the spending cuts

Posted on August 25, 2010 by lisa

I’ve changed the way you can let the ‘Where Does My Money Go?’ team know about a spending cut. It’s really easy now, you just need to paste in the url of a place the cut is reported … and … Continue reading →

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How much does our energy cost?

Posted on August 4, 2010 by lisa

A big part of my motivation for working on the ‘Where Does My Money Go?‘ (WDMMG) project was to learn more about the cost of the UKs energy system and the cost of mitigating climate change. What interests me about … Continue reading →

Posted in Visualization, Where Does My Money Go | 1 Comment

HMRC are, at their option, exempt from freedom of information law.

Posted on July 16, 2010 by lisa

An important part of the Where Does My Money Go? project is to gather more information about our taxes. I thought the obvious place to look for that kind of information is HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), so, I explored … Continue reading →

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Reporting council spending: a taste of things to come

Posted on July 13, 2010 by lisa

I met a couple of people from the finance team at Cambridge City Council (CCC) this week. This meeting makes me want to beam a message out to all councils saying: “if you publish your data in machine readable form, … Continue reading →

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A Big Part of COINS was not Published

Posted on July 9, 2010 by lisa

This is a post by Lisa Evans, lead researcher on Where Does My Money Go?.

When I saw the COINS data that was published at the beginning of June, I suspected there was something missing.

I had been reading about the Whole of Government Accounts (WGA) — a project to provide a really good detailed overview of government finances [...]

Related posts:

  1. What was COINS missing? The mystery of the Government’s hidden spending data
  2. COINS: A Users Guide
  3. Understanding COINS
Continue reading →

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The whole of government accounts: an exercise in elimination

Posted on July 7, 2010 by lisa

When the large sample of COINS data was published on the 4th June it was accompanied by a guide to the data. The guide is very useful, but one thing it doesn’t explain in very much detail is where the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Understanding COINS

Posted on June 17, 2010 by lisa

Something amazing has happened since the government spending recorded in the COINS database was made openly available to everyone. I’m talking about the impressive range of free, and in many cases open source, products to display the COINS data.

So far there are COINS search engines from The Guardian and The Open Knowledge Foundation, graphs from Rapid Gate Way and Alpine Interactive and [...]

Related posts:

  1. COINS: A Users Guide
  2. The Hunt For COINS
  3. What was COINS missing? The mystery of the Government’s hidden spending data
Continue reading →

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COINS: A Users Guide

Posted on June 4, 2010 by lisa

At 0930 BST today the UK government released the COINS database, one of the biggest sources of information on UK public spending. Open Knowledge Foundation Director Rufus Pollock says:

The release of this data marks another milestone in the opening up of public data – in which the UK leads the way. While this [...]

Related posts:

  1. Understanding COINS
  2. A Big Part of COINS was not Published
  3. What was COINS missing? The mystery of the Government’s hidden spending data
Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized, Where Does My Money Go | Comments Off