Spending Data – Execution Details

Spending data is defined as data relating to the specific expenditure of funds from the government. This may take the form of a contract, loan, refundable tax credit, pension fund payments, or payments from other retirement assistance programs and government medical insurance programs. In the context of our previous examples, spending data examples might be a $5,000 grant to Johnson’s Wind Farm for providing renewable wind energy, or a contract for $750,000 to Boeing to build Mars rover component parts. Spending data is often transactional in nature, specifying a recipient, amount, and funding agency or ministry. Sometimes, when the payments are to individuals or there are privacy concerns, the data are aggregated by geographic location or fiscal year.

The fiscal data of some governments may blur the lines of these definitions, but the aim is to separate the political documents from the raw output of government activity. It will always be an ultimate goal to link these two datasets, and to allow the public to see if the funding priorities set by one part of the government are being carried out by another part, but this is often impractical in larger governments since definitions of programs and goals can be “fuzzy” and vary from year to year.

Spending data

For most purposes, spending data can be interpreted as transactional or near-transactional data. Rather than communicating the broad spending priorities of the government like budget data should, spending data is intended to convey specific recipients, geographic locations of spending, more detailed categorisation, or even spending by account number.

Spending data is often created at the executive level, as opposed to legislative, and should be more frequently reported than budget data. It can include many different types of expenditures, such as contracts, grants, loan payments, direct payments for income assistance and maintenance, pension payments, employee salaries and benefits, intergovernmental transfers, insurance payments, and more.

Some types of spending data – such as contracts and grants – can be connected to related procurement information (such as the tender documents and contracts) to add more context regarding the individual payments and to get a clearer picture of the goods and services covered under these transactions.