School of Data is pleased to introduce a new blog post series by Marta Conejo Sobrino, presenting case studies of data visualization projects in journalism and civil society.

Civio is a Spanish non-profit organization that fights for a stronger democracy. They are currently running six projects on transparency and free access to public data.

Your Right to Know

Records on petitions. It shows date of submission, all correspondence with the public entity, and state of completion (mostly delayed).

Your Right to Know allows citizens to petition Spain’s public institutions for information. There are no freedom of information laws in Spain. With such a scenario, no wonder why, in 2012, Your Right to Know obtained only 75 answers out of its 567 requests. They’ve submitted 1,058 requests since 2012.

Our Daily BOE

Articles on the latest BOE announcements.

Our Daily BOE is a ‘readable’ daily update on the “only requirement those who govern must complete”: publishing BOE (government official announcements) documents on state budget approvals, changes in legislation, nominations, and subsidies. This easy-to-read BOE site has reached an average of 29,524 visits a month.

Who’s In Charge?

The Bossy photo booth depicts power relationships in an interactive infographic. Users may click on these nodes to find out an almost infinite loop of connections.

Who’s In Charge? is a map of public-private power relationships in Spain. As they put it: “We want both lobbying to be regulated and the highest positions of power to publish their complete work agendas.” They received the Testing123 Global Integrity Innovation Fund, an organization that invests in “brand new ideas that target the challenges of corruption, transparency and accountability”.

The Pardonometer

In the Pardonometer, users can filter pardons by means of region or category. Results are shown by year and explained in easy-to-read tables.

The Pardonometer is a compilation of all pardons granted in Spain since 1996. It has compiled 10,350 pardons into a set of easy-to-understand interactive infographics.

Spain in Flames

Interactive map which shows areas in danger, hectares burnt by region, worst episodes in history, and more.

Spain in Flames gives the details on why thousands of hectares burn to a crisp every summer with no proper measures taken. We’re talking about the biggest database on forest fires (government investment on prevention, list of prosecutions, hectares burnt per year).

Where Do My Taxes Go?

Tax expenditure by year and state department.

Where Do My Taxes Go? is a tool that allows us to see how much money the General Administration of the State and Social Security spends and how they spend it in Spain. This interactive visualization provides data from 2008 until today. They have managed to analyze national and regional budgets (52 regions), but they still need help in compiling and visualizing local data.

Tools

Civio has created a unique API for the Pardonometer free for anyone to download. On their sites, in order to make it easier for others to pursue their own research, it is also possible to download the full data sets. For compilation and data cleanup, they’ve used Open Database License 1.0.