Set Your Spreadsheets to Stunned

June 4, 2010 1:32 PM

The UK Government has published extracts from COINS, the Combined Online Information System used by the Treasury to track all public spending by the Government. Together, the files constitute about 11Gb of data in delimited text format containing consolidated financial information for each department and account type.

The Guardian have produced a web interface allowing search and drill down within the dataset. For instance: how much did the Department of Transport spend on consultants in 2009/10?

So far it only covers 2009/10 and 2008/09. Data back to 2005 will be released "in the next fortnight", but the current year's data will not be released until next June.

posted by Electric Dragon (3 comments total)

Curiously, the government spends more than £2bn every year on Trident, the British nuclear deterrent that isn't a British nuclear deterrent. The warheads are leased from the US government and their operation is dependent on US satellites and US co-operation.

In other words, the British government spends £2bn a year to paint a flag on a tiny fraction of the US nuclear arsenal. Toodle-pip!
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:59 PM on June 4, 2010 [4 favorites]

correction: the missiles are US-owned, not the warheads
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:03 PM on June 4, 2010

Oh but the missiles are "operationally independent" (lol)
posted by atrazine at 2:40 PM on June 4, 2010 [1 favorite]