I've been very quiet on the blogging front recently. Something about the autumn, something about being insanely busy on some secretish and some not so secretish projects. Something about being a little bored with writing about the web. I've had an idea for a total reconfigured blog here that I now have the toys to put together properly. Anyway, this is digression.
Yesterday we had the inaugural meeting of The Open Rights Group, and by an amazing co-incidence, we also hit our pledge, so now starts the business of, well, getting down to business.
Since launching one organization a month seems to be too few, I'm also today inordinately proud to announce FarmSubsidy.org. It's a milestone for me in many ways:
- First pan-european political (with a small p) site
- first internationalised site I've built- not finished yet, but we have the capability and the ambition for 8 european languages
- probably did more down and dirty coding on this than anything in years. Which may be why it might be a bit ropey in places.
What does it do?
Farmsubsidy.org is publishing the results of (eventually we hope) 25 Freedom of Information Requests, 1 per EU country. The question is quite straightforward: "Who are the recipients of Common Agricultural Policy subsidies?", in essence, where is all that money going.
It turns out, to some quite surprising places. Who'd have thought that celebrity staff sackers Gate Gourmet would get €670,000 of farming subsidies last year? Perhaps they own the sheep that wander the fields at Heathrow.
There'll be lots more data, more ways to slice and dice, just, y'know more, over the next few months.
Anyway, the idea is that, full and frank and open disclosure is a wonderful thing, and will help the citizens of Europe be assured that their money is being very well spent.
For some quite entertaining bits of bureaucratic squirming, you can read the different excuses that various governments have come up with to justify keeping the data secret.