Accountable: Exploring the inadequacies of transparent financial practice in the non-profit sector

Matthew Marshall, David S. Kirk, John Vines

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

15 Citations (Scopus)
40 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Increasingly, governments and organisations publish data on expenditure and finance as 'open' data in order to be more transparent to the public in how funding is spent. Accountable is a web-based tool that visualises and relates open financial data provided by local government and non-profit organisations (NPOs) in the UK. A qualitative study was conducted where Accountable was treated as a technology probe, and used by representatives of NPOs and members of the public who invest their time or effort voluntarily into such organisations. The study highlighted how: current open data sets provided by public bodies are inadequate in their representation of funding structures; the focus on finance and fiscal expenditure in such data makes invisible the in-kind effort of volunteers and the wider beneficiaries of an organisation's work; and problems arising from the interoperability of open data technologies. The paper concludes with implications for the design of future systems, considering the domains of transparency and accountability in relation to the findings.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCHI 2016 - Proceedings, 34th Annual CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PublisherACM
Pages1620-1631
Number of pages12
ISBN (Electronic)9781450333627
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 7 May 2016
Externally publishedYes
Event34th Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2016 - San Jose, United States
Duration: 7 May 201612 May 2016

Conference

Conference34th Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySan Jose
Period7/05/1612/05/16

Keywords

  • Accounting
  • Advocacy
  • Finance
  • Transparency

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