The Next Web

The Guardian want your help digging through MP Expenses

By Zee on June 18, 2009



Picture 12If you’ve been in the UK over recent weeks or are a regular visitor to BBC.co.uk and other British news sites, you’ve no doubt come across the MP expenses saga that has grabbed the papers and readers attention alike.

The story is far from over as up until now, the expense details had been leaked affair - now they have officially been released by Parliament and the Guardian wants your help in digging through them.

So how does it work? Each page needs to be reviewed, and somewhere amongst the thousands of pages are expenses that need further investigation and yes, a headline to place on a Guardian newspaper.If you find something which you think needs further attention, simply hit the button marked “investigate this!” and the Guardian will take a further look.

Credit where its due, this is rather innovative and is like to leave many an MP with another few weeks of sleepless nights. It isn’t however the first tool out there designed to delve into MP expenses, WhatTheyClaimed and this demo of business analysis tool Qlikview both help.

Here’s an example of one of the 19305 pages that need to be reviewed.

Picture 11

Update 1:

Guardian journalist Charles Arthur writes in detail as to how the Guardian created the application in a matter of a few days.


Zee Twitter/Facebook
Based in London, Zee is Editor in Chief of The Next Web.Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
One Response to “The Guardian want your help digging through MP Expenses”
  1. [...] The Guardian want your help digging through MP Expenses – Zee Wow, wat een geweldig voorbeeld van Crowdsourcing! Je lezers inzetten voor een taak waar ongetwijfeld veel mensen zich graag voor lenen, al was het maar uit irritatie over die zakkenvullers. Meteen een mooi voorbeeld hoe de noodlijdende kranten industrie naar nieuwe manieren zoekt om met lezers in contact te komen cq. blijven [...]




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