ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
ETUDE DE CAS
VISUALISER DESDONNÉES OUVERTES
Sébastien Pierre, FFunction inc.@Hackons la Corruption., Novembre 2012
www.ffctn.com
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
INFOGRAPHIC : SE7EN SUMMITS
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
GOOGE DATAVIZ CHALLENGE 2010 (FINALIST)
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY'S PROJECTS
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
2008Canadian Federal
Travel & HospitalityExpenses
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
SOME THINGS HAVEN'T CHANGED SINCE 2008
➔ SCRAPING DATAin the absence of open-data, journalists will often be in the same context, having to spend time to collect, explore and assess the quality of the data.
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
SOME THINGS HAVEN'T CHANGED SINCE 2008
➔ FROM DATA TO STORYEach dataset is a discovery, getting a (compelling) story out of it is still a major challenge.
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
THE DATA
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
As the result of a federal government directive*, Travel and Hospitality Expenses have been published on the web in Canada since 2004
* Called “proactive disclosure”
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pd-dp/gr-rg/index-eng.asp
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
Data is (still) not directly accessible, and hosted on each specific ministry website, in a specific format.
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
NON-OPEN DATA
ACCURACY PROBLEMS
DATA MAY BE MISSING
DATA NOT UP TO DATE
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
22Mb SQL filescraped by citizens(available on Github)
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
A DATASET WHICH TURNS OUT TO BE A BIT OPAQUE...
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
BUILDING A TOOL TO EXPLORE THE DATA
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
Basic analysis of the data
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
Thinking about how to represent the data
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
Thinking about the flow of interaction
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
Importing and visualizing the data
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
Mapping out the different types of expenses (travel, hospitality & guidelines)
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
Simplifying the representation (expenses vs guidelines, over guidelines is in red)
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
Changing the focus (under/over guidelines instead of total spending)
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
Adding guides to improve reading the information
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
Adding filtering to narrow down to subsets of the data
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
Trying alternative representations on the data
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
Trying even more alternative representations on the data
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
THE RESULThttp://ffctn.com/a/expensevisualizer
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
I just found out the 5 top spendingFederal depts, check it out at http://ur1.ca/a3spt
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
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FINDINGS
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
TRENDS ONLY BECOME APPARENTWITH THE PROPER MODE OF REPRESENTATION
Cumulative spending
Monthly spending
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
PROBLEMS IN THE DATA QUALITYBECOME VISIBLE
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
Spending of ministers for all departments
THINGS YOU WOULD EXPECTARE NOT NECESSARILY THERE
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
DATA TO STORY: CHALLENGES
➔ NON-OPEN DATA– Missing or incomplete data: is the problem in the
scraper or in the actual data?– At least you now have a tool to assess (and improve)
the data quality
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
DATA TO STORY: CHALLENGES
➔ NOT WHAT I THOUGHT– You might expect something about the data,
but the visualization might prove your wrong– You might have been looking for something specific
but you cannot see it in the visualization
See my “30 min of data visualization”workshop for more on this...
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
DATA TO STORY: CHALLENGES
➔ DID I TRY HARD ENOUGH?– There's no secret: you'll find something interesting if
you explore your data enough.– If everything fails, you can at least get fun facts or
controversial examples out of it.
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
HOSPITALITY EXPENSES SKYROCKET IN 2008 !!
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
2.5xAs much
INDUSTRY CANADA'S BIG SPENDER
MINISTER DIRECTOR
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
WAR IS COSTING CANADA AN ARM AND A LEG!
3 MILLIONS!(over a period of five years)
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
WE NEED OPEN DATA!
THIS IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE PROACTIVE DISCLOSURE!
THE BEST STORY IS:
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
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TOOLS
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
https://github.com/OpenRefineGOOGLE REFINE
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
http://vis.stanford.edu/wrangler/DATA WRANGLER
ffunctioninc.
© FFUNCTION INC, 2011
http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/MANY EYES