OpenBudgets.eu (OBEU) aimed to integrate budget data on the different levels of administration. Hence, a semantic data model for budget and spending has been defined. Transaction and budget allocation items are thus made available for discussion and debate by stakeholders, such as citizens, NGOs, public service companies, media organisations, and also public administration entities. The stakeholders are provided with a toolbox for creating and sharing visualisations, conducting comparative data analyses and discovering trends. Stakeholders are able to view and compare allocated budgets and transactions and give feedback on each item. This can be shared and directly exploited by public administrations so that better budget management will be achieved. The project developed the following components:
- A semantic data model,
- A financial data ingestion tool,
- A library of visualisation tools with a user-friendly interface,
- A library of data mining and comparative analysis tools,
- A feedback and citizen engagement interface,
- Comprehensive Open Data export interfaces,
- The OBEU open-source framework and portal,
- Three large-scale use-cases including stories, tools, evaluations, studies and tutorials.
In its 30 months running time, the project has developed a platform with 13 tools and 3 use-cases.
The OBEU toolbox and solutions were extensively tested in three major cities in Europe: Bonn, Thessaloniki and Paris. The various successful testing procedures have led to extensive evaluation reports and implementations around Europe. The cities of Paris, Thessaloniki and Bonn are all planning to further implement the OBEU tools in their contexts. Finally, individual partners have already rolled out the tools in the first client cities. The project partners implemented the different OBEU toolboxes and solutions within their expertise and geographical locations. To this end, OBEU partners will establish a community group which is not legally binding but will maintain, advocate and disseminate the project’s results and innovative value proposition. The consortium is committed to Open Source Software and its principles. All the tools are openly licensed and the profit comes from software use and consultancy, which helps improving software and spreading it through the community. The objective is to improve financial transparency, only with as many partners, consultancies, companies, academia and the administrations we can reach this goal.
