Local authority pages
Each page is built from public data: the accounts published by the DGFiP, the OFGL data, the public procurement data, the voted tax rates and the national register of elected officials. It is updated every year, when those sources publish.
Content of the page
The town’s spending by public policy, its capital spending, its purchases, the property tax rate and the debt. Each indicator is shown next to the median value for towns of the same size, and the page can be compared with another town’s.
The subject of each public contract is given a short title, and every supplier has its own page. For 528 towns, the page also shows the official list of the grants the town awards, read from the annex of its budget documents (the list of contributions awarded to third parties).
Every intercommunality (1,261), département (96) and region (17) has its page too, built the same way, with the towns it is made of.
The page is public. Anyone can report an error, compare two towns or sign up for an email when the town’s figures change.
Data sent by the local authority
National public data describes the accounts and, for some towns, the grants of one year. It describes neither the progress of a worksite nor the cost of a facility. The authority’s own files make that possible. The page for Paris gives an example:
- grants, recipient by recipient, year by year;
- worksites, with their photo and their progress;
- the adopted budget, presented by public policy, as soon as it is voted;
- facilities: the amounts paid for a pool, a school or a stadium;
- an assistant that answers questions about this data in plain language, citing the amounts it uses (for example: “how much does waste collection cost?”).
This requires the local authority to send its files. No software is installed and Qipu has no access to its information systems. Qipu processes the files it receives and publishes their content on the page.
Feedback from local authorities
The site has been under construction since the spring. Qipu collects feedback from elected officials and staff, in particular on three points:
- how the authority answers questions about its spending today, whether they come from residents, journalists or councillors;
- the information the authority’s page should show;
- the data the authority holds that is not published.
Write to daniel@qipu.org, giving the name of the local authority.