About Us

What is it about?

Publicspending.net is an independent, self-funded research initiative that collects, interconnects, and publishes open government spending data from around the world. It is an effort to demonstrate the usefulness of economic Linked Open Data in promoting transparency and innovation.

How does it work?

Open data from various sources — including government data portals and DBpedia — is gathered, processed, analysed, corrected if necessary, interlinked, and depicted. Results are published as tables, graphs, statistics, bulk datasets, and through a SPARQL endpoint. For more detail, see How It Works and Research.

Available datasets

Who is behind this initiative?

Publicspending.net is run by scientists and web professionals from Greece and Spain. The team focuses on engineering meaningful interconnections among public spending data, developing algorithms to unify different company names and harmonize payment category classifications such as CPV and NAICS. The initiative collaborates with deixto.com for web data retrieval from sources without APIs or RSS feeds.

Publicspending.net is built around a simple but powerful premise: that the movement of public money is something every citizen deserves to see clearly. The project gathers open government spending data from jurisdictions such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Greece, Australia, and others, then interconnects that information into a unified, searchable dataset. By tracking payments across categories like economic classifications, procurement codes, and company payees, the platform reveals how trillions of dollars flow through public systems each year. The goal is not merely to display raw numbers but to make the connections between payers, payees, and programs visible and understandable to anyone who takes the time to look.

At the heart of the effort is the conviction that Linked Open Data can transform how governments are held accountable. Rather than leaving spending records scattered across incompatible portals and formats, Publicspending.net works to standardize, enrich, and cross-reference those records so that meaningful interconnections emerge. The team focuses on developing algorithms that unify company names, map entity classifications, and reconcile varied accounting conventions across national boundaries. This engineering work makes it possible to compare spending patterns across countries and categories, revealing both anomalies and best practices that would otherwise remain hidden inside dense, isolated datasets.

The platform also emphasizes reusability. Every dataset published on Publicspending.net is intended to be downloaded, queried, and integrated into other tools and analyses. Users can execute endpoint queries, watch tutorial videos, and explore the data through an intuitive interface designed for both casual visitors and serious researchers. The site is a live demonstration that open data is not just an abstract ideal but a practical resource for journalists, civic technologists, academics, and engaged citizens. By making the underlying records accessible and well-documented, the project invites others to build on its work and extend the reach of transparency efforts worldwide.

Publicspending.net operates as an independent, self-funded research initiative, which means its priorities are shaped by the mission rather than by commercial interests. The project gathers information from government data portals, DBpedia, and other authoritative sources, then processes and analyzes that material to correct inconsistencies and fill gaps where necessary. This careful curation ensures that the published datasets are as reliable and complete as possible. The team remains committed to ongoing development, enriching expenditure records with additional context and parallel classifications so that the data grows more useful over time. In doing so, the initiative demonstrates what sustained, principled investment in open information infrastructure can achieve.

Ultimately, Publicspending.net is an invitation to follow the money and to ask better questions about how public resources are allocated. Whether the focus is a single municipal budget in Chicago or Alaska, a national procurement system in Greece, or a global comparison of spending categories, the platform brings the same rigorous, transparent approach to every dataset. Visitors are encouraged to explore, question, and reuse the information in ways that serve their own communities and interests. The project stands as a testament to the idea that when spending data is open, interconnected, and genuinely usable, it becomes a foundation for innovation, accountability, and more informed public debate.