Late last year I asked for the follow information from the Department of the Taoiseach:
1) A ‘datadump’, (ie a copy/export of) the Oracle financial management system in use by the Department covering the time period for 2010. This datadump should contain data relating only to the following subheads:
Travel and subsistence (A2)
Training and development and incidental expenses (A3)
Postal and Telecommunications services (A4)
Office equipment and external IT services (A5)
Office premises expenses (A6)
Consultancy services and value for money and policy reviews (A7)
National economic and social (B)
Commemoration initiatives (C)
Tribunal of Inquiry (Payments to Messrs CJ Haughey and M Lowry) (D)This should include the following column heads (ie fields)
Payment date; Subhead item; Cost Centre; Vendor Name; Invoice number; Line description; Amount.
Subhead A1 covers salary data, which did not form part of this request. While the data was released in a physical hard copy format (yes printed out and posted to me), the total sum of non-salary expenditure should amount to €6.465m. Because I have not converted the documents into spreadsheets, and because some lines are entirely blacked out, I have not been able to perform a SUM calculation on the spreadsheets.
The data contains spending of all types, including telephones, post, lunches, travel, bus fares, road tolls, flights, hotels, taxis, ferries, catering, photography, books, newspapers, bank charges, couriers, tea/coffee, legal charges, uniform cleaning, footwear, mobile phones, photocopying, office equipment, stationery, cleaning, cleaning supplies, and more.
Gavin, do you know if the Oracle financial management system is in common use across govt departments?
Cheers
Yea common enough, that and SAP.
Ta. Did you get a copy of their data dictionary? Is that where you got subheads?
Data dictionary seems to be double dutch to many departments – I’ve asked for it verbally on a good few occasions, and most react in puzzlement. Same for information assets registries.
Subheads are at per.gov.ie
Cheers Gavin
Was the Taoiseach represented at all these funerals or was Brian Cowen TD represented at some of them??
Gavin – ever thought about doing a FOI request re. foreign travel by Members and Directors of Local Authorities? Not as juicy as the central gov. stuff but it could be just as entertaining and enlightening.