Let's say there were two EU-funded projects: a Greek one from 2013 that cost 1 million eur, and a Romanian one from 2007 that cost 4 million lei. Which of the projects was more expensive? While this question seems deceptively simple, providing a correct answer is not as straightforward as we might expect. Moreover, the ability to compare money is essential for analyses of fiscal data, so it is important we get this answer right.

Fiscal transparency is defined by the IMF as “the comprehensiveness, clarity, reliability, timeliness, and relevance of public reporting on the past, present, and future state of public finances”. For journalists, parliamentarians and citizens alike, fiscal transparency can mean an unobstructed view into the financial affairs of the state.

The participation and involvement of governmental bodies, stakeholders and citizens in order to promote open data initiatives and open government was one of the main goals of the event 'Open Government: Participate, Propose and Be Heard! Conformation of the Third National Action Plan 2016-2018.'

Tracing EU funds is difficult. The problems with following the money from the EU range from the low availability of budgetary data, which often needs to be obtained on a per request basis, to the ability to identify relevant monetary amounts, which leads to guessing related code list concepts. Due to the complexity of the flows of EU funds, tracing them is a manual and thus error-prone process that involves a lot of copying and pasting from heterogeneous spreadsheets and studying dull regulatory documents along the way. In this post we illustrate the challenges of tracing EU funds on an example of a concrete project.

EU-spending is often portrayed as intransparent and at risk of corruption or waste. Now that the debate about the EU across member states heightens, those in favour of less Europe paint a picture of money-squandering institutions and unaccountable “eurocrats”. But with so much rumour and speculation it begs the questions: how does the EU actually spends its money? How transparent are EU budgets and funds and can how we track EU spending?

Participatory budgeting is a complex process with multiple external and internal stakeholders involved. Integrating the demands from this process into the everyday workload of a big public administration is a major challenge that often requires customised internal tools, capable of producing up-to-date and comprehensive information about the status of the participatory budgeting process.

A lack of clear and easily accessible facts about the EU often makes it easy for journalists to create interesting, if inaccurate stories about EU regulations which are typically rather dull.

Visualizing money flows from public budgets in the real world is harder than it looks. We made a tool to make it easier.

A post by Nicolas Kayser-Bril of Journalism++

A post by Nicolas Kayser-Bril of Journalism++