Transparent tax and spend

The Spectator blog wonders about George Osborn's idea to publish all government spending over £25,000 online and points to a site in the US state of Missouri which does just that.

It's a good idea, but you know what happen. The civil service will design a vastly over-complicated system that will be delivered years late and billions over-budget, will not do what anyone wants and will be impossible to use.

There's a better way. Most modern IT systems can publish reports direct to the web. All that needs to be done is to add a report-writing package (and maybe a data warehouse) accessible to the public onto the existing financial systems in each department.

Let's not overcomplicate things.

Comments

[Kit]

Yes, I think it sounds counterintuitive to non-IT people but it is cheaper to publish everything rather than a sub-set. Just provide an API to the data and Google et al will be all over it like a rash.