The province and the municipality of Groningen made an important step towards more financial transparency. As of now their detailed financial information can be found on Openspending.nl. Income and expenditure is now visible at deeper levels then ever before and the data is re-usable in innovative apps. The province and municipality of Groningen are the first Dutch governments to release this financial information as open data with this level of detail.
Detaildata gives insight users wanted
On Openspending.nl budgets and financial reports of all Dutch municipalities, provinces and water boards are published. This information is available at an aggregated level. Research by the VU Universitiy Amsterdam showed that council members, civil servants and journalists are in need for more detailed information. Arjan El Fassed, director of the Open State Foundation: ‘You used to find posts like “other bookings” on Openspending, detaildata shows that the money in this post has been spent on education of the personnel, excursions or IT-costs’.
More governments joining
The financial data of the province and municipality of Groningen are now visible on Openspending.nl. With the support of the Dutch Ministry of the Interior the Open State Foundation has been working on adding more financial detaildata of the municipalities of Dordrecht, Heerlen, Lelystad, Oirschot and Utrecht. Detaildata of these municipalities will soon be visible on Openspending.nl.
This year the amount of participating governments will rise because Openspending Detaildata has been made a part of the Dutch Open Government Action Plan of the Ministry of the Interior. Governments that want to release their financial detaildata can contact the Open State Foundation.
Explore the data on Openspending