Documentation
OpenSpending.org - an open platform for government expenditure tracking
OpenSpending offers an easy system to upload, explore and share public finance data - such as budgets or expenditure databases. While we offer search and visualization features to slice and dice financial data, our API is even more powerful: it enables anyone to easily create their own visualizations and budget apps, without building their own backend.
The site is offered as a free service. All code, content and data are shared and openly licensed. No user of the platform will become involuntarily dependent on the site. Our sustainability model relies both on grant funding and technical services provided to CSOs, governments, media and international organizations. If you are interested in working with us, please get in touch.
Explore existing spending datasets
- Dive in: Explore the European Commission's direct expenditure and create a chart.
- Search across all data to investigate supplier activity across the globe.
- Watch a recorded workshop about the project from the International Journalism Festival.
Upload and share a financial dataset
- Get an overview of the steps required to upload a dataset.
- Learn how to format and prepare your data and find help with some common problems.
- Create a custom dataset once you have some structured data.
Make your own budget monitoring site
- Read the intro to the Where Does My Money Go? Assembly Kit and follow the intro.
- Experiment with our API to power custom visualizations.
- Browse existing JavaScript apps on GitHub.
... and don't forget to:
- Read the Frequently Asked Questions to catch up on the background.
- Join our mailing list to discuss with budget enthusiasts from around the globe.
- Report any technical issues you may experience while using the site.
- Visit some of the other projects of the Open Knowledge Foundation.
Under the hood
OpenSpending is free software. We believe that running a central store of spending information has strong benefits, e.g. to enable cross-dataset search and comparisons. Therefore, we encourage everyone to use the main site.
If your use case has special demands relating to privacy or if you have concerns over using a service hosted in the United Kingdom, here is the documentation to help you set up a custom install.
Documentation
Source code
- openspending - core backend software.
- openspendingjs - JavaScript frontend code.
- osvalidate - model and data validation toolkit.
- taxman - personal tax calculation API.
- dotorg - content for the site and the blog.