This presentation describes our work in development of the open budget format. It was presented on ICEGOV2016 conference

1. ICEGOV2016, Montevideo, Uruguay
Open Budget Format: Issues on Development
of Specification and Converter Implementation
Olga Parkhimovich, Vitaly Vlasov
1

2. Outline
• Open Finance Data in Russia
• Reasons
• Budget process in Russia
• Project scope
• Approach 1. Using OpenSpending
• Approach 2. Open Budget Format
• Converter and Budget Data Validator
• Use case: Other countries
• Use case: Municipal budgets of St.Petersburg, Russia
• Future work
2

3. What is Open Finance Data in Russia?
3
Budgets
datasets
Contracts
Financial
Reports
3 budget levels
4 budget
stages
> than 23 000
local authorities
at least 4 versions
> 92 000
datasets per year
> 17 000 000
from 2011 year
2 budget levels
Monthly,
Quarterly,
Annually
> 1 100
datasets per year

4. What is Wrong with Budget Data?
4
St. Petersburg (Russia) Milton Keynes (UK)
meta-data without data data without meta-data
not machine-readable format
complex and frequently
changing classifiers
no codes
errors and misspelling

5. What is Wrong with Budget Data?
5

6. Name Target costs
Type of
costs
Section,
subsection
Amount
1 Total 76 591 596,0
2 State Program «Public Health» 51 0 0000 13 388 576,1
3 Subprogram «Primary health care» 51 1 0000 601 242,0
4
Costs for the operation of state-owned public
institutions
51 1 0016 169 453,3
5
Wage fund of state-owned institutions and
contributions for compulsory social insurance
51 1 0016 111 135 922,3
6 Ambulatory care 51 1 0016 111 0902 135 922,3
budgetitem
Current Structure of Budget File
6
Code of the
chief
administrator
of budget
funds
Section
code
Subsecti
on code
Code of the target article
Type of
costs code
Government
Operations
code
Program
code
Sub
prog
ram
code
Spending
priorities code
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Budget classification code

7. Reasons
• High interest among authorities in making budget
more transparent and reusable
• Current budget process is inefficient
• Problems of using current format
• Citizens need to know how their taxes are spent
• Civil society should engage in all stage in the budget
process
7

8. Project Scope
8
•Goal: to make budget data simple and useful for
developers and citizens
•Tasks:
•analyse existing approaches
•implementation of international methods for the
Russian data
•develop initial standard and specification of Open
Budget Format (OBF) version 1.0
•measure budget data quality and check on loca level

9. Approach 1. Using OpenSpending
9
• Popular platform for
publication of financial
information: https://
openspending.org/
• Budget items are
presented as rows with
values of different
«dimensions». Dimensions
could be organized in
groups and facets for
better visualization
• Open Refine tool has been
used to prepare data for
OpenSpending.
https://openspending.org/russianbudgets/
Dimensions
Using of Open Refine

10. Problems with OpenSpending:
• Current budget format could not be imported
directly (without preparation)
• Specific requirements for Open Spending
Solution:
• Automation of preparing budget file with Open
Refine tool.
Implementation
Pros:
• System is ready to use
• Visualization tool
• Budget items are interlinked
Cons:
• This is proprietary format. Open Spending is
just one of systems and like «Microsoft» in the
world of financial data (like XLS vs. CVS).
• Government is not ready to put data into third-
party services.
• This data format could not be used for
interoperability for government needs.
We suggest another way:
• Our approach is not software but proposal of Data
Format which could be applicable for different
systems.
• Government can use this format as they want and
integrate in their own systems.
• Easy to use for exchange information and building
new services (official government services or
citizen apps)
Budget item page
Program
Name
Code
SubProgram
Code
Name
…
…
See example of "budget item" page in Open Spending
Budget
Code
beta version of Leningrad’s budget for citizens website: lenobl2014.ru

11. • Include best practices of the existing
standards (e.g. SDDS
1
of IMF
2
, Open
Contracting
3
, Open Spending)
• Compatible with Data Packages
4
.
• Based on text formats (JSON, CSV,
XML)
Approach 2. Open Budget Format
11
JSON CSV XML
Data package
4
SDDS
1
OCDS
3
XLS
5
Compatibility
Versioning
Versality
Scalable
Current budget
formats
Text formats
Key
characteristics
1
SDDS - Special Data Dissemination Standard
(http://dsbb.imf.org/Pages/SDDS/home.aspx)
2
IMF - International Monetary Fund
3
OCDS - Open contracting Data Standards by
Web Foundation (http://ocds.opencontracting.org/
standard/r/0__3__2/.html)
4
http://dataprotocols.org/data-packages/
5
XLS - current Russian standard of budget

12. Versality
Simple, general and universal, represent the budgets on
different levels.
Good for automation
Convenient for automatic processing and clear, if necessary
for editing (converting) it by user.
Scalable Ability to use to represent any budgets in other countries too.
Versions support
It is necessary to be able to specify different versions of the
budget.
Integrated. Compatible with
other budget formats
Easy for integrating with other existing formats such as Open
Spending, Open Contracting Data Standard and Budget Data
Package.
Friendly and intuitive
In connection with trend of publishing «budgets for citizens»
and «open budget» by governments it is necessary to have
such version of OBF (readable both for machines and people).
Approach 2. Open Budget Format.
Key Characteristics
12

13. Basic Data model
13
Budget Item
id amount
Admin
name
code
Classification
name
code
code version
period
region
date
type
stage
level
attribute object
Budget item is a
peace of budget
information
which must be
identified by time
(financial year or
other period),
one amount,
government
organization and
purposed

14. Name
Avaliable
types
Mandatory Description
itemId string required
Unique ID of item in current data set. May include
numbers, etters, special symbols
version string required
Version of budget doc, see details below. Could be
«final» or Number
docVersion number required Last version of document
level enum required "national" (N), "regional" (R), "municipal" (M)
country string required Code of Country (RU, US, etc)
subject string required Name of City, Region or Country, depends on level
dateCreation date-time required Date when current budgetItem has been created
dateChanged date-time required Date when current budgetItem has been changed
tag enum required "expenditures", "income"
stage enum required
"Proposal", «approval", "adjustment", «execution",
"amendment". Any additional comments could be
included in comments section.
lang string required Current language of document
comment string optional For example reference to law
Implementation. Meta Data Fields in OBF
14

15. Name
Avaliable
types
Mandatory Description
budgetItemCode string required
National budget classification or code system (in
Russia Code of Budget Classification)
budgetItemName string required Name of budget item
adminName string required
Name of organization that carries out operations
with current budget item
adminCode string required Code of organization
amount number required Amount of budget item
currency string required Currency of country or operation
Required Data Fields in OBF
15

16. Extended data model
Country-specific data model (Russia)
16
Basic model
Admin Classification
attributes
GRBS Program
SubProgram
Section
GovOper
SubSection
SpendingType
Article
Any country can extend basic model and build own specific.

17. Versioning
17
•Mechanism of updating
current file («U», update)
•Each version has own file
(«F», files)
•Info about stages of budget
(«S», stages)
U-, US-, F-, FS-
versions

18. CSV version of OBF v1.0
18
•All data is presented as rows
•First rows should contain names of field
•All areas of fields should be presented
for each row
•U, US, F, FS-versions could be
implemented

19. {
“budgetItem” : {
“itemId” : “121299”,
“version” : “final”,
“docVersion” : “1”,
“level” : “R”,
“country” : “RU”,
“subject” : “Leningrad Region”,
“dateCreation” : “16-09-2014 13:14:13”,
“dateChanged” : null,
“tag” : “income”,
“stage” : “execution”,
“lang” : “ru” }
}
<metadata>
<level>R<level>
<country>RU</country>
<subject>Leningrad Region</subject>
<lang>ru</lang>
</metadata>
<items>
<budgetItem>
<itemId>121299</itemId>
<version>final</version>
<docVersion>1</docVersion>
<dateCreation>16-09-2014 13:14:13
</dateCreation>
<tag>income</tag>
<stage>execution<stage>
</budgetItem>
</items>
{ "type": "budgetItem",
"properties": {
"itemId": { "type": "string" },
"version": { "type": "string" },
"docVersion": { "type": "number" }
"level": {
"type": "string",
"enum": ["N", "R", "M"]
}
... },
JSON Schema
A piece of data
Example of XML data
JSON view & XML view
19

20. Converter and Budget Data Validator
20
•We created algorithm that can clean and extract only
valuable data from Russian budgets.
•Validator can build data model and find mistakes in file.
http://validator.citizenbudget.ru/
Just upload file (XLS / XLSX)
See report about data and errors.

21. Use case: Other countries
21
• Based on BOOST World Bank project data for
Armenia
"BudgetItem" : {
"NationalId":"4111-010101-1",
"Period":"2006",
"Amount":335071800.00,
"Level":"N",
"Admin_Name":"Staff of President of RA",
"Admin_Code":"101001",
"Classification_Econ1Name":"Running
expenses",
"Classification_Econ1Code":"4000",
"Classification_Econ2Name":"Payment for
labor",
"Classification_Econ2Code":"4100",
"Classification_Econ3Name":"Salaries and
additional
payments paid in drams",
"Classification_Econ3Code":"4110",
"Classification_Econ4Name":"Salaries and
additional
payments of employees",
"Classification_Econ4Code":"4111",
"Classification_Func1Name":"General public
services",
"Classification_Func1Code":"01",
"Classification_Func2Name":"Legislative",
"Classification_Func2Code":"0101",
"Classification_Func3Name":"Legislative and
executive bodies, public administration",
"Classification_Func4Code":"010101",
"Classification_ExpTypeName":"Personnel",
"Classification_ExpTypeCode":"1",
}
Source data (XLS)
Exported in OBF
Structure of budget (BOOST)
Admin
Classifications

22. Use case: Municipal budgets of St.Petersburg, Russia
22
We collected data from 111
municipalities of St.Petersburg.
Analyze them, structure and map
by quality of data information.
Only well-structured budgets are
valuable.
Rating of Openness and Quality of Budgets
Rate 2014 2015
AAA OBF, CSV, RDF OBF, CSV, RDF
AA xls xls
A other/XLS XLS/other
BBB doc doc
BB other/doc doc/other
B pdf/html pdf/html
CCC -/pdf pdf/-
CC image image
C no no
You can find more
on poster exhibition.

23. Conclusions & Future Work
23
•We can convert and visualize the Russian budget for less
than three hours, and explain this process to the ordinary
citizen or official
•We have the first version of Open Budget Format
•With the Open University (UK) we are developing Open
Finance Ontology to model finance linked data
•Future work:
•comparison of budgets and government contracts
•more useful visualizations
• Project web-site: http://openfinances.org/

24. Contacts
Olga Parkhimovich,
olya.parkhimovich@gmail.com,
@OpenDataRu
Vitaly Vlasov, inxaoc@gmail.com,
@inxaoc
24
KEEP CALM AND TRY TO RESEARCH BUDGET DATA
ICEGOV2016, Montevideo, Uruguay