Where the UK government spends the public money?

On Dec. 11, the Open Knowledge Foundation posted online visualisation showing British government spending over the past six years.

The Where Does My Money Go? project was prepared and published by the not-for-profit organization, Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF), to help the British taxpayers better understand where public funds are being spent. The visualisation allows the public to explore data on UK public spending in an intuitive way using an array of maps, timelines and graphs. By means of the tool, anyone can make sense of information on public spending in ways which were not previously possible. In addition to the particulars of the amount of money spent on specific objectives, the project enables the tracking of expenditure trends over the past six years. It shows total spending across the UK, breakdowns for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and even spending by region. The project was built using the data released by the government, and was arranged in such a way that everyone can easily understand them. As Jonathan Gray, of the OKF, quoted by the Guardian, said

The crucial thing is taking the step from transparency to accessibility. Creating this visualisation helps people make sense of all of the figures. It means that government moves from "being transparent in principle to accessible in practice".

Tom Watson MP, commented on the project:

Where Does My Money Go represents another milestone in the UK’s transparency movement. We know that transparency changes individual and institutional behaviour and this new tool will have a big impact on the way the public sector is held to account by UK citizens.

As well as being a great public benefit, Where Does My Money Go is also an immensely complicated tool to code and design. I applaud the team behind the project for their commitment and hard work. They’re leading the way in transparency and making a difference for the country.

The project, which will be released under an open-source licence, is a winner of the Cabinet Office’s Show Us A Better Way competition.