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.