Subvenciones (subsidies)

A challenge with the National Subsidies Database (Base de Datos Nacional de Subvenciones)

GitHub	https://github.com/JaimeObregon/subvenciones
Discord	https://discord.gg/r2ytSa782D
Original idea	https://twitter.com/JaimeObregon/status/1507693311422877697 (thread in Spanish)

The starting point

The spanish Ministry of Finance operates the National System of Publication of Subsidies and State Grants (Sistema Nacional de Publicidad de Subvenciones y Ayudas Públicas). It is a web portal that gathers all call for proposals and public grants.

This website is an initiative in favour of transparency, but has notable limitations.

The problem

The official portal provides a poor interface for accessing the data that, however, has a great value for transparency:

1. The search tool is rudimentary, with a user experience with room for improvement. The portal, apparently, does not allow simple uses such as, for example, gathering and exploring the totality of the grants given to a specific beneficiary. The ergonomy of the system is poor, with a tedious user interface, links that expire and therefore cannot be shared...

2. The data queries are very slow. The mere loading of an arbitrary page may involve waiting more than 2 minutes. This dinamites the citizenship's access to the data, as in practice the queries are so slow that it turns out to be impossible. The citizen gives up.

3. The data cannot be downloaded. Partial downloads are available, but the portal does not provide a mechanism to download the complete set of data. This disallows the offline use of the data and the application of advanced analysis methods.

The challenge

Can we, as civil society, make it better? Can we, as a country, provide us with a better tool to access and publish these public data?

The challenge consists in getting all of the public data from the official portal and create an alternative tool to explore them in a useful, effective and creative way.

And make it cooperatively, joining efforts and capabilities around a collaborative open source project to which everyone who wants to can get involved and contribute.

How to contribute

[WIP]

• If you are a programmer...

• If you are an expert in public grants...

• If you are a designer...

• If you work in the public administration, for example as an auditor, you can tell us how to ...

• If you are a journalist...

• If you are an specialist in data protection...

• If you are a lawyer...

• If you are something else, go ahead! Take a look and collaborate in what you like.

Next steps

[WIP]

1. Finish this intro

2. Organize the next steps

3. The repo can be moved away from JaimeObregon and into a more neutral place, so the project is not associated with someone specific.

Legal framework

[WIP]

...

Contributors

Go ahead, participate and add your name to the list! You can find it in the main README (spanish version).