Local Transparency – Council Spending over £500

IN 2010 THE GOVERNMENT set a deadline for councils to become more transparent by publishing all of their spending data over £500 online in "accessible formats" by the end of January 2011.

In October HU12 made a request to the East Riding Council to tell us when the details of its expenditure over £500 would be available, and where on the Council's website this information will be found? This request was first dealt with as a Freedom of Information request but was considered to be part of the council's normal operations so was dealt with as an ordinary query.

While the original query was acknowledged, the information requested was never provided. However, the East Riding Council has in fact published its local spending data: See East Riding Council Local Transparency. This webpage was tracked via a Government Press Release on its Communities and Local Government website.

Unfortunately, the East Riding Council data is published as a PDF file (portable document format) which makes searching the data very difficult. Hull City Council on the other hand additionally publish the data as a CSV file (comma-separated values) which makes for easier searching and analysis: See Hull City Council OpenData.

It is very clear which is the most "accessible format" - and the East Riding clearly needs to do better!