Historical budgets from 1866 and a long way to turn them into open data
Yesterday a small but important event happened - the Ministry of Finance of Russia laid out in open access all scans of budget murals and budget reference books since 1866.
You can read this in the form of an announcement , you can immediately go to the section Historical budget on their website, and you can learn how it all happened and why it is very important and interesting.
For several years now I have been dealing with such an interesting and narrow topic of open data as open historical data. When working with data on history, very often you want to operate not only with facts, but also with bases that are hidden behind these facts. For example, population censuses, demographic directories and any other reference books with tables and numbers on the basis of which you can understand what happened then.
')
And for several years I personally went and knocked the thresholds of several ministries and departments trying to convey to them the simple idea that to sit like “dogs on data” is indecent and everything that is not under the stamp should be digitized and spread at least by scans, and then turned into Database.
I can not say that this happened successfully. For example, even being a member of the public council under Rosstat, I was not able to convince them to start digitizing their historical reference books. Any conversation has always been reduced (and it is reduced now) to the fact that Rosstat has no money, but there is absolutely no, and therefore they will not scan anything and do not plan. And I did not manage to get access to their archives.
There were several other departments and several attempts, most of which ended with the round eyes of the officials and the words that they still had no archives.
And there was only one department whose directories remained. Not just left, but they have been stored and stored for almost 150 years now - this is the Ministry of Finance of Russia
The first budget painting (not written by hand) has been kept there since 1866 and is then available in years for each fiscal year of the Russian Empire and for most of the years of the RSFSR and the USSR.
How can this information be used? Yes, just an infinite number of ways!
And much more.
And almost the most important thing.
Even when the BudgetApps contest started, we started working with these scans, then not all but those that were available. And the most interesting years and the data of the Ministry of Finance posted in the section of open data in CSV format on your website. This is what we did manually and for the competition, on the basis of this data even several projects were created.
Despite the fact that much has been done, this work is very far from complete. Not all directories are translated to Excel. PDF files of scans do not have a text substrate, they are still unrecognized. The tables are not consolidated into a single database of historical budgets. There are no other historical figures and figures added, facts, and much, much more.
But, due to the fact that all scans are now in the public domain, we can do it ourselves and convince the Finance Ministry not to give up this important work.
I ask everyone not only to speak here in the comments, but also be sure to write your ideas and wishes to colleagues from the Ministry of Finance directly at opendata@minfin.ru with the wishes that I would like from the historical budget and the library of historical data.
And also take part in a survey about what we can do next.
You can read this in the form of an announcement , you can immediately go to the section Historical budget on their website, and you can learn how it all happened and why it is very important and interesting.
For several years now I have been dealing with such an interesting and narrow topic of open data as open historical data. When working with data on history, very often you want to operate not only with facts, but also with bases that are hidden behind these facts. For example, population censuses, demographic directories and any other reference books with tables and numbers on the basis of which you can understand what happened then.
')
And for several years I personally went and knocked the thresholds of several ministries and departments trying to convey to them the simple idea that to sit like “dogs on data” is indecent and everything that is not under the stamp should be digitized and spread at least by scans, and then turned into Database.
I can not say that this happened successfully. For example, even being a member of the public council under Rosstat, I was not able to convince them to start digitizing their historical reference books. Any conversation has always been reduced (and it is reduced now) to the fact that Rosstat has no money, but there is absolutely no, and therefore they will not scan anything and do not plan. And I did not manage to get access to their archives.
There were several other departments and several attempts, most of which ended with the round eyes of the officials and the words that they still had no archives.
And there was only one department whose directories remained. Not just left, but they have been stored and stored for almost 150 years now - this is the Ministry of Finance of Russia
The first budget painting (not written by hand) has been kept there since 1866 and is then available in years for each fiscal year of the Russian Empire and for most of the years of the RSFSR and the USSR.
How can this information be used? Yes, just an infinite number of ways!
- For starters, you can look at historical analogies. Compare the budget of Russia now and 100 years ago, right at the height of the First World War.
- You can see the pre-revolutionary draft budget for 1917.
- You can find out what was the pre-war and post-war budget of the USSR.
- You can find out when what taxes formed the main money of the state.
And much more.
And almost the most important thing.
Even when the BudgetApps contest started, we started working with these scans, then not all but those that were available. And the most interesting years and the data of the Ministry of Finance posted in the section of open data in CSV format on your website. This is what we did manually and for the competition, on the basis of this data even several projects were created.
Despite the fact that much has been done, this work is very far from complete. Not all directories are translated to Excel. PDF files of scans do not have a text substrate, they are still unrecognized. The tables are not consolidated into a single database of historical budgets. There are no other historical figures and figures added, facts, and much, much more.
But, due to the fact that all scans are now in the public domain, we can do it ourselves and convince the Finance Ministry not to give up this important work.
I ask everyone not only to speak here in the comments, but also be sure to write your ideas and wishes to colleagues from the Ministry of Finance directly at opendata@minfin.ru with the wishes that I would like from the historical budget and the library of historical data.
And also take part in a survey about what we can do next.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/263187/
All Articles