The Money and the Many: Connecting government finance and citizens’ issues
Description
We’re experiencing unprecedented numbers of datasets about government expenditure being released sometimes allowing us to track expenditure down to the nearest penny, sometimes nothing more than a best guess to the nearest hundred thousand dollars. But who cares? This data is often meaningless to the average citizen without teams who can interpret it for the public’s understanding. Increasingly, NGO’s around the world are turning to technology and the internet to tackle this problem.
This presentation and panel brings together expertise from Europe, Africa, Central & Southern America in bringing numbers to the people and building literacy and engagement around how your government spends your money. Speakers: Oluseun Onigbinde, Damir Mehmedbasic, Gisele da Silva Craveiro, Federico Ramírez.
Session Format
16:00-16:45 Short introductions to the projects
16:45-17:30 Panel discussion: the panel will touch on topics such as:
- Local challenges, sensitivities and data literacy of the audience
- Technical challenges
- Outreach, communication and collecting feedback
NOTE: This is a two-way session and we’d love the audience to contribute to the discussion. We’d particularly encourage anyone running projects to de-mystify government finance in their country to come along and share information about new projects and their experiences.
Session Host
Lucy Chambers
Contributors
Oluseun Onigbinde, Damir Mehmedbasic, Gisele da Silva Craveiro, Federico Ramírez
Bios
Damir Mehmedbasic, Executive Director, Public Interest Advocacy Center (PIAC). Bosnia and Herzegovina. PIAC is an independent organization, monitoring budgetary and extrabudgetary spending in Bosnia and Herzegovina. PIAC is also promoting citizens’ understanding of public finance through various analyses released to the media in a form of a statement, usually followed with a comprehensive graphics or a chart.
Oluseun Onigbinde, Team Lead, BudgIT. Nigeria. BudgIT is a Nigerian civic startup driven to make Nigerian budgets and public data more transparent, accessible and understandable across every literacy span. Oluseun, a trained engineer, Ashoka Fellow and data enthusiast has strong interest in using civic engagement to ensure government accountability.
Federico Ramírez Corona, Lead Programmer, Fundar, Centro de Análisis e Investigación Mexico Federico has been the lead programer at Fundar since 2010. He develops websites that attempt to raise awareness and promote citizen debate on government expenditure. Particularly on farm subsidies and official advertisement.
Gisele Craveiro, Professor and Coordinator of Research Group on Public Policy for Access to Information (GPOPAI), University of São Paulo Brazil Gisele and team are developing the project “Cuidando do meu bairro” (Caring for my neighbourhood) in order to put individual public expenses onto the São Paulo City map allowing people to see what is being built in their area.
Details
Location: INSPIRE meeting room
Date & Time: Wednesday 19th, 16:00-17:30
Target Group: Anyone interested in the topic
Topic Stream: Transparency and Accountability
Session Etherpad page: linked from http://okfestival.okfn.org/Tastream