Politiken, the third-largest daily newspaper in Denmark, has put online a data visualisation application which presents the budgets of 98 Danish municipalities, using Open Data.
Called kommune.politiken.dk, the web app aims at providing better knowledge of the municipalities in the country, publicly disclosing how local budgets are spent, and increasing transparency.
Data are collected from the government statistics agency in Denmark. According to Danish regulations, municipalities must send their financial information to the Ministry of the Interior.
Incomes and expenditures of selected cities can be visualised through various data visualisation tools, sorted by expenditure and income items. Eight items are detailed to observe how the budget is balanced and what the sources of income are: taxes, social and health services, administration, urban development, housing and environment, traffic and infrastructure, utilities and, finally, education and culture. The evolution of income and expenditure can also be compared from 2007 to 2013.
Compare and classify
For example, the city of Aarhus forecast a budget of Kr 24 million in 2013.In 2013, 76.54% of Aarhus’ income came from taxes and 14.52% from social and health services. The city spent 59.52% of its budget on social and health services and 16.52% on education and culture.
The web app also allows users to compare the way two municipalities used their budgets and shared their resources. The tool can also classify cities according to their level of expenditure or income on a specific topic. For example, in 2013, the city of Ishoej spent Kr 0 on environmental protection.