French Court of Auditors to create a community of data re-users

The French Court of Auditors (Cour des comptes), which is in charge of monitoring state spending, has organised for the first time a session to promote the reuse of their financial data.

Called DataSession, this event, supported by Etalab (in charge of open data and open government strategy in France), aimed to bring together developers, data journalists, designers, students, associations, jurists and members of civil society to create a community of users around open financial data.

During the event, which took place on May 27-28, the Court of Auditors also published new datasets: entire reports, including raw data and metadata. Until now, reports have only been accessible in PDF format. Also published was the list of bodies controlled by the institution, anonymised rulings of regional agencies of the Court of Auditors, among others, Etalab notes on its blog.

The Court of Auditors started to publish data in 2014 and it standardised the process in 2015. This should now be a “natural process” among the agents at the Court of Auditors, Jérôme Filippini, General Secretary of the Court of Auditors, told France Culture (a French radio).

He also said that this openness is directly linked to the principles of Open Government. The institution is involved in the first French National Action Plan, via two commitments.

Re-using data for openness and transparency

For this DataSession, participants had access to data in advance (on forum.etalab.gouv.fr) in order to create a specific project. Participants and representatives of the Court of Auditors then discussed the projects.

In the end, five projects were presented:

• OpenBudget.fr intends to make budget data more accessible at local level;
• Reco-Tracker follows the implementation of the Court of Auditors’ recommendations;
• Datapartage intends to secure the sharing of data included in the institution’s reports;
• FRAP is a search engine for reports;
• Doctrine.fr is a global index of all the Court’s judgements.

These projects are to be presented to the President of the Court. Some of them are to be showcased during the Paris OGP Summit in December.