Every year, govern­ments draw up finan­cial budgets to chan­nel the use of tax payers’ money in all sectors of the economy. In some count­ries, detailed reports are also provi­ded how these funds were appro­pria­ted while in other count­ries, such infor­ma­tion is regarded as state secret thus paving the way for corrupt prac­ti­ces. In Nige­ria for exam­ple, a  closer look at the 2017 budget reve­a­led that sewage coll­ec­tion in a single govern­ment buil­ding increased by 765% with any clear justi­fi­ca­tion. With the avai­la­bi­lity of open data, start-up compa­nies, jour­na­lists, finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons and data enthu­si­asts are now able to inde­pendently track govern­ment spen­ding. How can this be achie­ved and how can the process be made more effi­ci­ent and accurate?

Budget infor­ma­tion is usually provi­ded in a long verbose docu­ment that cannot be easily unders­tood by ordi­nary citi­zens and are not machine reada­ble for analy­sis. A data driven company in Nige­ria, BudgIT, reco­gni­zed that it can achieve more trans­pa­rency for current and plan­ned projects with open data records to support compa­nies in alig­ning their stra­te­gies with govern­ment spen­ding. To achieve this, data­sets such as histo­ri­cal fede­ral and state finan­cial budgets, infla­tion rates, tax reve­nues, govern­ment reve­nues, debts, loans, and record of actual govern­ment expen­dit­ure are used.

Such a large set of finan­cial infor­ma­tion are not readily available from a single source. Gathe­ring such data will involve an exhaus­tive search from various govern­ment portals such as minis­try of finance, submis­sion of Request for Infor­ma­tion (RFIs) from various other sources. The Adva­neo data market­place offers:

Cate­go­ri­sed Data­sets: We provide over a million data­sets from various govern­ment portals and global econo­mic data. Each data­set has been proces­sed to ensure they lead to valid acces­si­ble data endpoint and have been cate­go­ri­sed for easier access.

Closed User Groups: Data mining, sort­ing and corre­la­tion tasks cannot be effi­ci­ently done in isola­tion. The Adva­neo data Market­place provi­des the option to create closed user groups where preli­mi­nary findings or data­sets can be shared first with colla­bo­ra­tion partners.

Secu­rity and Privacy: Finan­cial data could some­time be clas­si­fied as criti­cal data espe­ci­ally if it provi­des insight to inter­nal invest­ment plans or stra­tegy of compa­nies. The Adva­neo data market­place archi­tec­ture ensu­res data­sets provi­ded by compa­nies remain private to the company as there is no repo­si­tory of such data­sets on the market­place.  Exch­ange of data occurs directly between a provi­der and user ensu­ring data sove­reig­nty and gover­nance by the data provider.

Track­ing govern­ment spen­ding not only provi­des more trans­pa­rency with how tax payers’ money has been produc­tively utili­zed, but also leads to better budget perfor­mance and prevent corrupt prac­ti­ces. The data, which is available on a single data market­place, will help compa­nies to relia­bly plan future busi­ness steps.