Response to TNC Platform

[Ian Plätschisch]

Better Know a Platform:
Talossa's Checkbook

We will direct the Ministry of Finance to create an online 'Talossa's Checkbook' site where citizens can see where our Treasury is budgeting funds and where actual spending is occurring. This information is available, but it should be obvious and accessible.

How is your country spending your money?  Where are those louise going?  How much more did we spend this term, compared to last?  How much money do we have, and how has the balance changed over time?

Two or three people may know the answers to these questions.  A larger handful could figure out the answers (if they needed to – no one will bother).  But for most of the country, they don't know and can't really find out.  This information is published in different places on Wittenberg, at different times, and by different people.  Unless you know the procedures, you probably don't even know that the budget information even exists!  Zooks!  We at the TNC think that the people deserve to know.

Reports from the Burgermeister of Inland Revenue, budgets from the Ziu, and actual expenditures should be available to the people of Talossa through an easy-to-read interface online, consistently published each term.  Just like with basic statistics about our country or an inventory of skills, this doesn't need to be any fancier than a simple spreadsheet.  Once we make the baseline information available, our citizens will have the access and resources to take care of the rest.  And maybe a future project could make this information more visual.  For now, we need to just let the people know how we're spending their money!

You'll notice that this has a similar vibe to our proposal to begin publishing some of the most basic statistics about our country for our citizens – things like immigration data, Wittenberg use, etc.  This is partially because we believe that Talossans deserve to be more informed about what's happening in their country.  But it's important to remember that making this information available will help encourage our citizens to use it.  Journalism, research, and politics will all benefit from data availability. C'e utzil es divertat.  And since it's pretty easy to just slap this stuff on a spreadsheet, it's crazy that we're not already doing it.

Vote for the TNC, and find out where your money is going!

The budget is easily accessible to everyone. It is a single thread in the Hopper.

Any extraordinary expenditure must be authorized by a Prime Dictate, which are always quickly added to the Digest of Laws if you happen to miss one.

The only thing that it might be hard to find out about is if there is budgeted money that isn't spent. Surely this situation is much less nefarious than non-budgeted money that is spent. Anyhow, if there is a lot of money not being spent, surely anyone who was interested would find out about via the overall lack of government initiatives happening.

This is just more mostly pointless reporting. If the TNC forms a government and wants to publish all this, more power to them, but I do wonder how long they could keep this tedium up.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

The budget is easily accessible to everyone. It is a single thread in the Hopper.

Any extraordinary expenditure must be authorized by a Prime Dictate, which are always quickly added to the Digest of Laws if you happen to miss one.

The only thing that it might be hard to find out about is if there is budgeted money that isn't spent. Surely this situation is much less nefarious than non-budgeted money that is spent. Anyhow, if there is a lot of money not being spent, surely anyone who was interested would find out about via the overall lack of government initiatives happening.

This is just more mostly pointless reporting. If the TNC forms a government and wants to publish all this, more power to them, but I do wonder how long they could keep this tedium up.

Yes, a handful of people who are aware of the government process for budgeting can figure out most of what they need to know, usually.  But it's insane that there's no single place where we're keeping track of this stuff publicly.  I know for a fact that the Government isn't trying to hide anything about the budget or expenditures, but it's just bizarre to insist that it's pointless to make basic statistics and spending data available.

How much has our budget increased, year-over-year, on average?  If we were keeping this information in one place, that question could be answered by anyone in only a few seconds.  To answer it now would require manually browsing through each budget act and supplementary spending bill.  What percentage of our budget was actually spent each term?  Even more tedious to figure out.

It is trivially easy -- it would take a few seconds -- for the Government to publish this data in one place and make it easy for everyone to see how their money is being spent and the status of the treasury.  It is practically the best-use case of government time: solving a coordination problem to benefit everyone and possibly spur more activity.

The Government thinks it's a waste of time.  Okay.  I disagree.  I think it's textbook good governance to keep track of important things so we can make better decisions about them.  We're not doing that, and we should.

Vote TNC!