Man Is The Media.
Using Crowdsourcing And Digital Publishing To Hold Governments Accountable
June 22nd, 2009 by Martin
File this under ‘(forced) radical transparency’. UK newspapers have taken upon themselves to publish the unedited expenses claims of every MP. Guardian has made the claims publicly available for crowdsourcing, that is, allowing anyone to sift through the vast material (457,153 pages so far) looking for entries that “deserves further scrutiny”.
Try it here. The interface is easy to use and they seem to be digging up some interesting data points already.
Telegraph has published the material a little differently, listing expenses underneath each cabinet member’s name.
If you click on any of the dates, you’ll see a full document with the particular MP’s expenses that year. Here’s an example with PM Gordon Brown.
I would like to embed the publication here for your viewing pleasure, but sadly (and ironically) Telegraph has chosen to make the publications private which disables easy sharing (published with Issuu). But you can find everything from this page.
Data Wars
In Denmark several of the current MPs have been faced with media fueled public outrage because of ‘inappropriate’ use of public funds. This includes Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen that shared 20 shots of ‘snaps’ (Danish hard liquor) and 5 pints with a fellow member of his party at a ‘work meeting’, everything at the tax payers’ expense.
If all expenses were made public, maybe Rasmussen, who was the Minister of Health at the time, would have thought twice before he went on a publicly funded binge. Judith Townend of Journalism.co.uk uses a great term ‘data wars‘ to describe the publishing of the UK MPs’ expenses.
In a democracy any tax payer should have easy access to information about MPs’ expenses; who spent how much on what, and when. I’m sure it would lead to fewer scandals and increase the value of every tax dollar spent. The examples from The Guardian and Telegraph are relatively easy to follow, using Django, Issuu etc. I hope it inspires newspapers in more countries, and, dare I say, governments as well (check out what Obama initiated with Recovery.gov. UK has their similar site, Parliament.uk, although they’ve been known to censor bills to a degree of uselessness).
