Where Does My Money Go?

Getting the Data

Data sources

• http://data.gov.uk/dataset/coins — COINS data on data.gov.uk
• http://ckan.net/package/coins-data — CKAN package with extra info
• http://ckan.net/package/ukgov-coins-field-definitions — CKAN package on COINS schema
• http://ckan.net/package/coins-programme-objects — CKAN package for programme objects

Scripts

For people interested in playing around with the data there are now python scripts:

http://bitbucket.org/okfn/coins — scripts (including loaders for sql, couchdb and mongodb)

High level web interfaces

• http://coins.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/ — solr + mongodb COINS search and browser
  • http://coins.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/pog — list of POG codes
• http://coins.guardian.co.uk/coins-explorer/search — Guardian faceted interface based on solr

API access

In addition if you’d like API access to the data we’ve made 2008-09 and 2009-2010 data available in solr at:

http://solr.okfn.org/solr/coins.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/

For example here’s a query to search for nuclear return first 10 rows in JSON format:

http://solr.okfn.org/solr/coins.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/select/?q=nuclear&start=0&rows=10&indent=on&wt=json

(There are lots of client libraries for Solr and a sample querysolr.py script in the coins bitbucket repo).

If you spot something interesting note it in this spreadsheet for the moment:

http://spreadsheets1.google.com/ccc?key=tjXlULZnawbO7p5VQpwJG8g

Overview of the Data

Key Background Facts on COINS

Public bodies have a requirement to report their spending to COINS.

Each local government body, and this includes all councils (except parish), all local police, local fire, local transport and park authorities, is required to report all items of spending over £1million once a year. The record of this spending is gathered by Communities and Local Government (CLG) and audited before it is entered into COINS as spending from CLG.

Similarly, each central government department has to report spending on all items over £1 million and agreements over £5 million and that they define this spending use their own spending codes for this. Some of these items are well defined in COINS — others less so.

Each of these bodies provide not only their spending once a year, but also estimates of their spending for the year ahead, once a month for every item of spending.

With the publication of COINS we can now see, for the first time all in one place, the spending and estimates for all of these public bodies.

But bringing this all together has a slight problem — there’s lots of accounting jargon that we can cut through here, to understand the great significance and value of this publication.

What It Is

COINS is a big listing of estimated and actual entries of money.

Each entry in the listing involves a named goverment department’s money.

Some of the entries show a department has bought something like a service or a product. Other entries show a department has recieved some money.

Key features

• Programme objects and Programme object groups: each department creates Programme Objects to which spendings is assigned.
• Account types (SCOA = Standard Chart of Government Accounts): standard “accounting-like” classifications of spending. Details of how the money is recieved or spent, so you can choose all spending on Wages & salaries or Current Grants to private sector.
• CPID: If money is exchanged between government departments we have a record of which departments were involved. The Counter-party Identifier (CPID) in the entry line is the description of the other department.
• Data type: Each of the monthly and yearly budgeting exercises can be identified with the Data Type category. Examples of these are Forecast Outturn March, Forecast Outturn April etc.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Why are there ‘0’s in many of the entries?

A. To summarize: amounts in fact sheet are pseudo-balances. Hence 0.0 represents 0 in that “account” at that time. E.g. we haven’t asked for any money for this thing in PLANS. Note that accounts and transactions are sort of interlinked.

Q. Do government departments choose the level of detail that they report their spending in COINs?

A. In theory a department can report their spending in COINS down to the last penny, there is no lower limit on detail. The upper limit is that departments must report spending over £1 million for that financial year.

Q. What do the figures in the database represent? Are they pennies, pounds or thousands of pounds?

A. Thousands of British pounds.

Q. How are funds allocated to government departments?

A. All departments have strategic objectives. They are allowed funds to meet them, they have to justify spending they want to make — it goes to parliament, parliament review it, if it is reasonable the spending is allocated. Then the department has to make estimates on their spending every month.

Glossary

POG Programme Object Group

A central government department’s defined items of spending. Each Programme Object Group has more detailed spending in its associated Programme Objects.

PO Programme Object

A central government department’s detailed defined items of spending.

CPID Counter Party Identifier

Tells of an exchange of money between two government departments.

Budgeting

SBI Supplementary Budget Information

Each department’s specific budget.

AME Annually Managed Expenditure

AME is public expenditure that is managed annually because it is less able to be estimated or controlled by the department than expenditure included in the Departmental Expenditure Limit (DEL). AME has both resource and capital elements.

DEL Departmental Expenditure Limits

DELs are firm longer term spending limits set for departments; there are separate DELs for resource and capital spending.

Resource

All wages and salaries and operating costs.

CAP Capital

The capital budget of a department is all new capital spending – that is money from the sale of assets and net lending (loans provided to departments less loans provided by departments). It includes an allocation for the investments made by public corporations and non-departmental public bodies.

Reporting

PESA Public Expenditure Statistical Analysis

A report produced by the Treasury annually to show spending for the previous 5 years and predicated spending for the next year.

COFOG Classification of the Functions of Government

A United Nations classification of the functions of government. The PESA report shows spending under these categories.

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