The coalition government has made all local councils make public all payments of over £500.

You can see Southwark’s here.

Sadly the barest minimum is provided – the title of the supplier and the amount spent in that month. No archive of months, no past years, no running total, no categorisation or cost centre making  the order, order raiser, or even a description of what is being purchased from the Purchase Order. In fact no context at all. It’s also presented as a pdf file making manipulation a little trickier. This really isn’t the open government intended.

It’s so bad that National Audit Office is getting involved. It is now pushing for a new central body, the Open Data Institute, to lay down standards about how to present such data. Hopefully Southwark wont wait until then and will finally publish data in the spirit that was meant rather than its current obfuscation.