Transparency in government
You have to give the new Coalition Government credit for a wholly new scale of openness in setting out the detail of public expenditure.
This week the government has released spending by every department over £25,000. The data covers over 194,000 individual transactions, payments to suppliers and bills covered by government departments in the first five months of the life of the Coalition.
There is lots excluded, though: the NHS, benefit payments, spending by quangos, information removed for “national security” and personally confidential reports. It is about £80 billion of an annual spend of £670 billion.
Check out the details via this “Guardian” aid.