Today the detailed income and expenditure of Dutch cities Dordrecht, Heerlen, Lelystad, Oirschot and Utrecht are published online. Detailed information from upkeep and maintenance costs of bicycle sheds and sport facilities, income from selling passports, marriage booklets and landsales to the costs of free public transport for the elderly and a pilot project to combat hemp cultivation.
You can find the detailed budgets and spending of these five cities on Openspending.nl. This goes three layers of details deeper then the spendingdata that is already released. This information gives citizens, journalists and council members more insight in the spending of public money then ever before.
With Openspending.nl budgets and spending data of all Dutch municipalities and regional authorities are published quarterly. Each quarter all local and regional governments send financial information on budgets and spending to the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics. The data is then released as open data. However the data is released on an aggregated level.
Earlier the province and municipality of Groningen released their detailed openspending data. Access to this type of data not only helps municipalities to spend public funds more efficient but also helps council members to find budgets for alternative proposals.
Financial open data
The detailed spending data is also re-usable in all sorts of applications that can keep track on municipal income and expenditure. Releasing financial detaildata of the municipalities of Dordrecht, Heerlen, Lelystad, Oirschot and Utrecht was carried about with support of the Dutch Interior Ministry. This year, more local and regional governments will start to unlock financial data, a commitment that is part of the Netherlands Open Government Action Plan.
Links to the detaildatat