Hello everyone,
I started to work at an encyclopedia dedicated to agriculture some one year ago. I am focused on country statistics since the very beginning. So, at this moment, the encyclopedia contains various tables with production by product, by country, and by year, like for example this table: http://agriculture.wikia.com/wiki/Wheat_production_in_the_United_Kingdom
I am very much for transparency and I think that the governments who claim to be transparent should have already done most of such work. Also the various foundations/associations who claim to fight for more transparency should be trying to gather all kind of such statistics (not only about agriculture), in order to help the citizen to understand how their countries are going from any point of view. There are various statistics institutes but the citizen need a Wikipedia-style encyclopedia where to easily access the data.
Sadly, my conclusion is that most of the anti-corruption and pro-transparency foundations are not interested of such things because they are founded by corporations — in countries where corporate welfare prevails.
Once the citizen has the knowledge, they can better involve into the decision making, pressuring their politicians to take certain decisions. For example, an informed citizen can notice the fact that the trade deficit of the country is high, and relate that with the unemployment, and then they can ask their politicians to stop importing some goods and to start producing inside the country, therefore reducing deficit and in the same time reducing unemployment. Maybe it's a good idea or maybe not - in any case, such availability of data would encourage the citizen to actually ask questions and think for themselves.
To me, transparency doesn't only mean knowing where each political party get their money from - to me, transparency means making all the relevant data available to the public, in order to encourage a participatory democracy.
I have also started on my own an encyclopedia dedicated to any relevant statistics for every country: http://countrystats.wikia.com - containing tables like http://countrystats.wikia.com/wiki/Public_debt_of_Spain
Anyways, my intention is to let other people know that such an encyclopedia exists and to invite anyone who would like to participate to do so.
Thanks for reading this
I started to work at an encyclopedia dedicated to agriculture some one year ago. I am focused on country statistics since the very beginning. So, at this moment, the encyclopedia contains various tables with production by product, by country, and by year, like for example this table: http://agriculture.wikia.com/wiki/Wheat_production_in_the_United_Kingdom
I am very much for transparency and I think that the governments who claim to be transparent should have already done most of such work. Also the various foundations/associations who claim to fight for more transparency should be trying to gather all kind of such statistics (not only about agriculture), in order to help the citizen to understand how their countries are going from any point of view. There are various statistics institutes but the citizen need a Wikipedia-style encyclopedia where to easily access the data.
Sadly, my conclusion is that most of the anti-corruption and pro-transparency foundations are not interested of such things because they are founded by corporations — in countries where corporate welfare prevails.
Once the citizen has the knowledge, they can better involve into the decision making, pressuring their politicians to take certain decisions. For example, an informed citizen can notice the fact that the trade deficit of the country is high, and relate that with the unemployment, and then they can ask their politicians to stop importing some goods and to start producing inside the country, therefore reducing deficit and in the same time reducing unemployment. Maybe it's a good idea or maybe not - in any case, such availability of data would encourage the citizen to actually ask questions and think for themselves.
To me, transparency doesn't only mean knowing where each political party get their money from - to me, transparency means making all the relevant data available to the public, in order to encourage a participatory democracy.
I have also started on my own an encyclopedia dedicated to any relevant statistics for every country: http://countrystats.wikia.com - containing tables like http://countrystats.wikia.com/wiki/Public_debt_of_Spain
Anyways, my intention is to let other people know that such an encyclopedia exists and to invite anyone who would like to participate to do so.
Thanks for reading this