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U.S. states have been classified as a line access to data on public expenditure, with Texas and Kentucky tops the list. See what else shows

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The 2012 report this week revealed the good news that other states of the United States are open about their spending by the publication of their transactions on their websites. He also outlined the states of Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Montana and Wyoming that keep their finances behind a password protected wall or has just been published at all.

A network of research groups in the U.S. public interest in the U.S. (PIRG), who prepared the report, found that 46 states now "allow residents access to checkbook level information on government spending online. "

The checkbook means a digital copy of the money from the receiving State, how and for what purpose. Perhaps to make sense of this "checkbook" concept is useful to compare the transparency of U.S. and UK public finances.

In the councils of the United Kingdom have published lists of their spending over £ 500 for a little over a year. This is mostly monthly, especially spreadsheets, and data can be anything from a list of suppliers and the amount paid on a specific date to other detailed accounts of expenditure.

The government website offering direct government research facility for local councils spending data. Web sites such as local costs openly and open source get together and make sense of the Council of the United Kingdom spend together.

There are difficulties in interpreting the data pasting property: it is often unclear whether the advance payment and payment will be made at a later date and it is not what is often a Payment. We have detailed these issues in this post datablog shortly after the first wave of transparency of the local council. This is not to diminish the potential of these data.

It's just the way the UK.

In the U.S. the best states are producing a checkbook tool that gives users the ability to control public spending in near real time as data is updated nightly.

But more than that the checkbook allows users to see the exact amounts paid to the supplier, without mixing in contracts that are in the form of pre-orders for the purchase or long-term contracts.

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The 2012 report found Texas and Kentucky to be outstanding examples of states that are accountable to their citizens. Kentucky has lost a few points in the standings that the information in spending checkbook is not downloadable, but the total amount of expenditures by department or type of service or good.

The value of good transparency is illustrated by some good examples in the report.

when Minnesota began requiring agencies to submit reports on the performance of funded projects, reports have revealed that many projects have received assistance from two or more funding sources, c ' ie, Minnesota taxpayers were sometimes forced to pay double and triple for the creation of these jobs. After the centralized publication of these reports, the double dip off.

Highlights of the report, with links to all sites in the state. Let us know what you think of classification and what you would like to see in the UK.
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