Greek data in the year 2011 - When the opendata movement should laugh

On December 19th, 2011 the Greek Parliament and the "special committee for accountability" led by Mr. Evaggelos Argiris, uploaded the ownership reports of all the MPs and MEPs for the year 2009 (economic year 2010). Despite the time lag and the delay in the name of accountability and transparency the official site of the Greek Parliament accommodated for the first time in Greek history data that according to the voted plan could raise awareness on the financial status of the elected public figures, thus allowing civic control and accountability. The plan for publishing the data and making it publicly accessible was massively advertised as a way to enter the digital era of data with useful benefits for the society derived from the ability to hold the politicians accountable. However, the original plan is completely different from the mere reality.

Initially it is quiet interesting to note that the cost for developing and maintaining the Parliament's site according to the President's statement is a total of 1,059,516.27 Euro (proof 1, proof 2). A rational mind should expect that a site that has cost to the Greek tax payer a  respectable amount of money will be suitable to store a good sort of information while serving hundreds of users at the same time. This working hypothesis based upon the rationality that such an expensive site will be able to provide quality services to the users, seems to have been falsified.

When the ownership reports of the MPs and MEPs were uploaded the site went offline for most of the morning hours and was unable to serve the demand of many users who desired to hold access to the fresh information. (I managed to finally access the website at around 14.00 having refreshed it a hundred of times)

On top of the inability to respond to high demand adequately, the second surprise and disappointment that led to anger was caused by the format that the site engineers (?) chose for the information to be stored. Paradoxically all the reports were in Flash format. According to people who are aware of the internet customs, this is quiet unusual as today most of the textual information takes the form of html or at worst embedded pdf, types that are accessible by a wider audience and allow users to process the data more easily. (source) In contrast, the engineers of the site chose to provide the information in Flash that is actually a digital depiction of the printed document. This type is nonmanagable by spreadsheet or other data processing softwares.

Data analysts, citizens, journalists, academics will be unable to download the information, store it and potentially analyse it in order to produce useful results such as comparisons, trends etc.

Was the selection of the specific format just a random choice?

An answer to the intention (or randomness) can be given directly by the terms of use that anyone can view from the same page as the reports of the ownership statuses. I quote the translation of Paragraph No. 5:

"It is forbidden to copy, publish, or partially publish the electronic ownership reports. Access to the data is only allowed through the portal of the Hellenic Parliament and only by technical tools that have been used for that purpose"

I guess that most of the questions regarding whether the selection of the format was intentional or not can be answered by the legal framework that was set to cover the information. It is clear that the status quo desires the data of their ownership statuses to be fully protected and hence citizens to only get a limited and thus non-threatening taste of civic control and accountability. They have forbidden through the terms of use any partial reproduction, copying of the data so as in two, three years from now when the fresher data for the present year become available, citizens to be fully unable to compare and run statistical analyses on the changes and trends of the elected officials' ownership statuses.

Other Observations:

A) The stable link for the reports of ownership of the MPs and MEPs for the year 2010: http://www.hellenicparliament.gr/Organosi-kai-Leitourgia/epiropi-elegxou-ton-oikonomikon-ton-komaton-kai-ton-vouleftwn/Diloseis-Periousiakis-Katastasis-Oikonomikou-Etous-2010-Chrisi-2009/

B) The reports and the terms of use are not accessible in English or any other language. Hence only Greek speakers can read and check the data. (I remind you here the cost of the site).

C) Downloading and analysing the data is illegitimate according to the terms of use. However if you seek a practical resolution to the problem imposed by the Flash format you may read here.

D) An interesting comment (by Takis Bouyouris) I read about the format of the information and the limited web accessibility that constitutes a violation of European Legislation. (e.g people with limited visibility are unable to use the special softwares that read machine language and convert it into audible sound).

Further Reading:

Exceptional opinions on  the ownership reports that I have read (unfortunately only in Greek)

- Zaphod Galaxyarchis

- Georgakopoulos

- E-cannibals

Can't find data on private deposit outflows for the EU countries

Having examined the recent developments in the Eurozone, one of the main consequences of the euro crisis is the incline of outflow in private deposits as individuals perceive the economic climate quiet unattractive in certain areas. In addition countries suffering the immediate threat of a potential default face the  concern of a withdrawal from the Euro as the case for Greece that could cause a collapse or turbulence in the banking sector with unpredicted results which at the worst scenario can even mean a breakdown in financial institutions that will hence be unable to preserve the deposits of the individuals.

Given the above macroeconomic picture in the Euro area, households that foresee negative financial prospects attempt to protect the lifetime savings by either gambling in currency, i.e. exchanging their euro saving accounts into some different currency that they perceive as more stable, such as dollars, english pound, australian or Canadian dollars, etc. This option guarantees the protection of the deposits in the scenario that the country to which the bank account is held decides to exit the euro and devaluate a newly launched currency. However, the threat of this choice is that the banking institution of the domestic country that finds itself under a default regime, might end up bankrupt as well. Since the deposits are held at home (where home defaults and the financial institution faces bankruptcy) the owner might risk to lose all the deposits regardless of the currency that the account is in. As a result, gambling in currency while keeping the deposits at home should be selected if the individual foresees that the default and the devaluation of the new currency after the country exits euro will not harm the banking sector or threaten financial institutions with a potential collapse.

Alternatively, the second scenario a forward-looking depositor might select, is to send the deposits to a financial institution abroad, to a country that is more protected from the current euro financial crisis. In such case, even after a country in the Eurozone defaults, the deposits will not be threatened as the banking sector of the recipient country will be more secure.

I have analysed the two mechanisms of "rational" (?) investing thinking so as to explain two interesting measures that are derived from the concepts. These are the deposit outflows by country and the currency preference by country. The first involves the individuals who select to expatriate their money to a foreign financial institution. For academics and journalists it is extremely useful to measure the countries that the individuals choose to send funds to. The second, is a figure of "currency strength" in the minds of the individual depositors. Both may constitute an exceptional index of economic climate expressed by the confidence of the private account holders.

Unfortunately, although I thoroughly examined the sites of both Eurostat and European Central Bank for data related to the status and movement (flows) of private account holders by country, I was unable to retrieve anything useful or relevant. The problem is that this information should exist and financial institutions, policymakers and a few journalists are aware of. Does anyone have an idea how or where relevant information may be retrieved? I would appreciate any recommendations as i ended up desperate after searching in most relevant data portals. I am mainly interested in deposit outflows and currency conversions for countries at the core of the crisis which belong to the periphery of the EU such as Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain. 

Funnily enough, in various newspapers the reader will be able to find numerous articles containing information about private deposit outflows such as number of outflows in money and frequency, recipient countries etc. The articles i have read, unfortunately, don't reveal the sources of the data while some mention that are derived from confidential banking sources and analysts.

Parliamentary Informatics - UPDATE 1

Few days ago I had posted a processed version of the Wikipedia article on Parliamentary Informatics (can be found here). The term is meant to define all the sources of information that help the civic society to monitor and assess the work of the public elected officials.

Since my first post I have discovered two additional attempts to enlist by country all the civic society initiatives to monitor public bodies.

UPDATE 1: A thorough review on Parliamentary Monitoring Organisation by the World Bank Institute can be found here (pdf file)

UPDATE 2:A Google Spreadsheet is under construction (accessible here) where anyone can contribute with sources that is aware of so as to widen the range of sources for each country.

UPDATE 3: A fresh spreadsheet with Parliamentary Monitoring Organisations for Developing countries has been uploaded (here). The file includes all websites enlisted in Agora.

 

Using Google Insights to create proxy variables

Check the article from Freakonomics to see how Google Insights can be used by researchers to create measures of social phenomena.

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz was certainly inspired!