Second Mini Spending Data Party

Second OpenSpending data party was held in 28 september at GPA building of Smart Samaj, this time we have our guest Friedrich.Our mini spending party start with small introduction and discusion with the new budget and how we can map the budget of 2013/14. From the final discussion we plan to map the money from annex i and annex v and the work begins.

Our guest Friedrich had been working in maping the Nepali budget and was there to help us beginner to map the money from local sources. He taught us a new tool i.e. google drive which helps us to links 2 database as a same time easy to clean the data and most imprtantly easy to use. Our team were divided into two team team of Bobby, Nikesh, Sajesh and Kshitiz did there work strating from scrapping the data from pdf using TabulaPDF, cleaning it and mapping it into openspending Foreign Grant and Loan -and second team team of Manish,  Rajesh, Manish, Rajan and Dheer for Service and Functional Details (Including Financing)  We begin our work from extracting the data from PDF to CSV format as in first spending party we had same problem cleaning the data which was really pain. Putting our pain aside all team members' worked hard to clean the data and finally at midnight party members finally able to clean data and put in correct format.

Next day, begins with the hot tea all members were busy in correcting the data they miss in early day. After cleaning and correcting all mistake finally we are able to map our annex i and v. (To view in Detail: http://np.okfn.org/2013/09/29/mini-spending-party-in-kathmandu-nepal-budget-201314/)   

Open as free to use share and modify, OKF Nepal give presentation on topic OpenData & OpenSpending which was held on 2nd ASCOL Open Expo 16 September 2013. OpenData was presented by Prakash Neupane Ambassador for Open knowledge foundation Nepal and OpenSpending from Manish Dangol.
Prakash Neupane start the presented with topic what is OpenData? What is public Data? Why Public Data Must be in Open format?

According to the OpenDefinition.org "A piece of data or content is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/or share alike.” 

PublicData mean a data which can be easily available to the public are known as publicData e.g. Country budget, public university/school budget etc. 

Each year every country issue huge amount of budget for the development of nation for public but due to in long listed format in pdf, excel or in document format normal public can't read it or they need specific software to view these data. Even if some people have all the requirement they can't understand it. So, the OpenData is build on the concept of easily accessible, machine readable.

Manish Dangol presented on the topic what is OpenSpending? Why OpenSpending Data? and some examples of OpenSpending Data?

Openspending is about mapping the money from where the money comes, goes and what the output of that money. OpenSpending is the data sharing community which tracks and visualize the ever government and financial transaction transaction across the world. Is it the group of the contributors which find openspending data, Clean it and visualize it so even normal people can understand the data.

First of all  OpenSpending data make public to explore and understand the data. It will help government and public to know how they are spending money and what will be the outcome with the help of the visualization.

Gapminder  World: This is a simple tool which help normal people to understand the GDP of each country.

Wheredoesmymoneygo.org : This is a website which help UK taxpayer to know where their money are spend? how much money are spend in food, security, health transportation and many more.   

Since presentation were related to government spending, development of the country, new and  interesting topic to the listener, listener kept keen interest on OpenData and OpenSpending and eager to know much more on this.
Finally, end of the presentation, we hope from ASCOL Open Expo presentation we could see more members on OpenData. 

SUBISU CAN INFOTECH 2013(DAY 3)

FOSS (Free Open Source Software) Free As Freedom:

Our final day at Subisu CAN infotech, 7 September. Morning environment around event area was stress because of strike(bandh) by Maoist (baidhya supporter) so, the event was launched little late than early days than as  usual we move to our stall A135 and start to manage our stall. We were already out of our stock Nirvikalpa 3.0, we had only stock of linux mint 32 & and 64 bit plus Obuntu which was modified by Oscal linux community from Amrit Science Campus located in Thamel.

Soon the visitor were started to enter in the event, in the event our stall was one of the busiest stall. We were much happy to give information about free and open source software to our visitor which were from school students to older people. In stall most people ask us about what is linux? Is it hard to use? Can I install both windows & linux in same computer and so on. In the stall the people keep keen interest upon the OS linux mint 13 as it was much familiar to use, genuine and most importantly virus free OS.

Being a final day we had more visitor than previous days and volunteer. Volunteer were busy in one on one counseling with visitor giving genuine information to every one and finally at the end of day we were nearly out of stock of available DVD, left DVD were only some linux mint 64 bit and Obuntu, which make us happy because they were proof that we provide right information to our visitor.

Finally, we close our event by providing information to visitor about free open source software and importance of it.