US City Open Data Census

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2016 / Boston, MA / Spending

A complete list of city expenditures at a detailed transactional level (including: tax breaks, loans, contracts, grants, and operational spending). Records of actual (past) municipal spending at a detailed transactional level, for example, at the level of month to month expenditure on specific items (usually this means individual records of spending amounts at a fairly granular level - e.g. $5-50k rather than at the $1m+ level). Note: a database of contracts awarded is not considered sufficient. This data category refers to detailed ongoing data on actual expenditures. (More info)

  • Status: pending
  • Submission date: 8:12pm on 4th Nov 2016
  • Submitter: Mahdi Moqri

Please read first

Please review this submission carefully as we have updated the guidance around what each dataset refers to and the data availability question explanations.

1. Official data sources

Please answer regarding official (government or government associated) sources of data. Often data is available from various sources both official and unofficial but we only want answers on the basis of official sources.

To illustrate: suppose election results data is available both from government sources and from a third party website and that the government data is in PDF (so not machine readable) but that the unofficial source has the data in spreadsheets (machine-readable). Then the answer to the machine readable question would be 'No' as the official source is not machine readable (but please do list the unofficial source in the details and comments section).

2. Provide evidence

Please try to provide relevant evidence to back up responses. For example, if data is public and online the URL field should not be empty, or, if the data is openly licensed there should be information (e.g. link) for relevant license of terms-of-use in the details.

3. Assessment Point

Questions should be answered on the basis of the situation as of today. Do not answer based on what may happen in the future (or the situation previously). So, for example, if data will be online soon but is not online now the answer to the 'online' question should be 'No' (though please mention that it will be available in the details and comments section).

Question
Yes
No
Unsure
Current
Information
Does the data exist?
Yes

Data must come from an official resource either issued directly by the government or by a third party officially representing the government. Data offered by companies, citizen initiatives or any non-governmental organisation do not count for the Index.

If the government has given the right to publish the data to third parties, a submission with a link a to third party site is allowed. The third-party site must explicitly state that the data has been commissioned by the government. Check if the organization has an agreement with the government to be the official source and make a note in the comment section.

Data Publisher

No entry

If known, please enter the department / organisation responsible for publishing this dataset along with contact email (if known). If the specific person responsible for this is known please also list them.

Title and short description

No entry

Please enter the title(s) and excerpted short description(s) of the dataset(s) as provided by the publisher. Description should be kept to a few sentences (max 1 paragraph)
Is data in digital form?
Yes

Data can be in a digital format, but not accessible online. For example: A country budget can be stored on a spreadsheet or otherwise on a private government network, but not on the Internet. This means that the data is digital, but not publicly available. If you know that the data is digital somewhere inside the government (e.g. a government official tells you so), then you should answer “YES” to this question and note in the comment section how you discovered the data is in digital form.
Publicly available?
Yes

Can the data be accessed by the public without restrictions? Data is considered publicly available when:

  • It can be accessed online without the need for a password or permissions.
  • If the data is in paper form, can be accessed by the public, and there is no restrictions on the number of photocopies that can be made.

Data is NOT publicly available when:

  • It is only made available after making a request.
  • It was availiable because of FOIA.
  • It can only be accessed by government officials.
Is the data available for free?
Yes

The data is free if you don’t have to pay for it.
Is the data available online?
Yes

Data is online if it can be accessed via the Internet (e.g. a website or open data portal). If the data has been emailed to you but is not accessible via the Internet, it is not considered to be available online.

URL of data online

https://data.cityofboston.gov/Finance/Checkbook-Explorer/gqai-h7bg

The link to the specific dataset if that is possible. Otherwise to the home page for the data. If that is not impossible, then the link to main page of site on which the data is located. Only links to official sites are eligeble, not third party sites. When it is necessary for submitters to provide third party links, then they are put in the comments section.
Is the data machine readable?
Yes

All files are digital, but not all can be processed or parsed easily by a computer. In order to answer this question, you would need to look at the file type of the dataset. As a rule of thumb the following file types are machine readable:

  • XLS
  • CSV
  • JSON
  • XML

The following formats are NOT machine readable:

  • HTML
  • PDF
  • DOC
  • JIF
  • JPEG
  • PPT

If you have a different file type and you don’t know if it’s machine readable or not, ask in the Open Data Census forum

Format of data

json

This question describes the form that the data is available in. For example, for tabular data it might be: Excel, CSV, HTML or even PDF. For geodata it might be shapefiles, geojson or something else. If available in multiple formats, the format descriptors are listed separated with commas. Any further information is put in the comments section.
Available in bulk?
Yes

Data is available in bulk if the whole dataset can be downloaded easily. It is considered non-bulk if the citizens are limited to getting parts of the dataset through an online interface.

For example, if restricted to querying a web form and retrieving a few results at a time from a very large database.
Openly licensed?
Yes

The licence must comply with the Open Definition which allows data to be freely used, reused and redistributed. The Open Definition provides a list of conformant licences. If the data uses one of these licences, it is openly licensed.

Licences are commonly found in:

  • the web page footer
  • a link to Terms & Conditions
  • the About section

Some licences may allow re-use and redistribution but have not been assessed as conformant with the Open Definition. In this case, seek feedback on the Open Data Index discussion forum

URL to license or terms of use

https://www.cityofboston.gov/doit/databoston/data_disclaimer.asp

Please provide the url to the license or terms of use governing access and use of this data (if known). If there is more than one URL you would like to list, please just list the primary one in this field and add further information in the comments box below.
Is the data provided on a timely and up to date basis?
Yes

Is the data current for the census year? You can determine or estimate when the data was last updated and its update frequency by reviewing:

  • the metadata displayed for the data in an open data portal or web page
  • the dataset title or filename e.g. Budget 2013-14 or Election_4July2015.csv
  • metadata tags embedded in the web page that contains the data
  • date values within the data to find the most recent date value
  • the timestamp on the data file (although this may not be accurate)
  • Some data is not updated on a regular basis. e.g. Pollutant emissions may be updated daily - while postal codes may not change for many years.

You may need to use your judgement to determine if the data is timely and up to date. Document your rationale in the comments section.

If you cannot determine a date, answer, "NO" i.e. the data is not timely or up-to-date.

Preview

No entry

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