Argentina’s Senate Expenses:Opening Public Data and Data Journalism

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4

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Argentina´s Senate Site (www.senado.gov.ar) – Senate

Expenses

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Site Descriptionwww.senado.gov.ar

The identified links are:

1. Procurement Tenders (1320 PDF’s)

2. Administrative decisions (14.205 PDF’s)

3. Accounting decisions (6.817 PDF’s)

4. Presidential Decrees (11.315 PDF’s)

TOTAL : 33.657

PDF’s

Feb 8, 2013

2) Processing Data - PDF’s Password Protected - Password Removal

Files are PDF´s generated from paper scanned documents….

But….. Password Protected PDF’s (against copy and printing).

So, before executing OCR process, we need to remove the Password

Protection.

3) Transforming Data - Run OCR 33.000 TXT documents

3) Transforming Data - OCR issues“Noisy” or unevenly scaned documents produce unpredictable results….

4) Processing Data I:Insert 33.000 TXT files in Excel worksheet, identifying entities, (persons and Companies),

amounts (money or bodyguards) and customizable Keywords) Analyze applying Filtering

Travel Expenses requested by the President of the Senate (Vicepresident of

Argentina), Mr. Amado Boudou, for 4 Security Agents for his trip to the United

States of America from 10/04/2012 to 10/05/2012.

$ 154.864,90 (~USD 35.000)

Who

When

What

Where

5) Identifying Patterns and Entities

How much

Security Agents expenses :

15

Agents

$49,737

6/18/2012-

6/21/2012

OCR mistakes

5) Identifying Patterns and Entities

Santa Fe

{

6) Processing Data II :Detecting dates interval, destination, number of security agents, and ammount of money

Journalistic Case : Show Service Company - Direct Purchases

1) Getting Data

Application to download

+ 33.000 Documents !!!

Senate’sPresident Decree

Senate Administration Department E.g

Senate Accountant Department E.g.

Senate Expensed StructuredDataset in Excel

Sunday Print editionand Infography

Sunday Print Editon infography

TABLEAU: filters per amount & destiny

IMPACT: VP takes to TV a stack of decrees in print

IMPACT: Judge reopens investigationon VP’s expenses

Interactive Gantt with overlapped orinexesistent trips reimboursed

Print Edition

Senate Expenses TAG gathersstories origitated in this database