Public access to expenses claims in The Scottish Parliament

"I believe now the level of access to our allowances information creates a level of public scrutiny which will establish us as one of the most open and accountable systems of any parliament in the world."
George Reid, Presiding Officer, The Scottish Parliament

A pioneering application to provide public access to expenses claims by Members of the Scottish Parliament is being powered by Content Finder from Folding Space.

In late 2005, The Scottish Parliament decided to undertake a project to provide access to details of their use of public funds for expenses claims for scrutiny by the public via an online system accessible through The Scottish Parliament website. The objective was to make the Parliament's expenses system into one of the most open and accountable of any parliament in the world.

The web-based service, which can be found at http://mspallowances.scottish.parliament.uk/MSPAllowances/, provides public access to the detail of allowances and expenses claimed by each MSP and operates without the need or cost for a commercial database unlike most other search technologies.

In practice each website visitor first nominates an MSP (or any permutation of MSPs), then chooses one or more of the ten Allowance Types and then, if desired, can choose one or more of the Expenditure Types per Allowance Type. This can be further refined by choosing a specific claim year and month, or a date range (From, To) . . . . .

Scottish Parliament

Required a search capability to allow the public to scrutinise expenses claims made by MSPs

Implemented Content Finder to allow rapid and accurate response to user queries over a public website

Resulted in one of the most open and accountable public systems in the World