Notes from Code Across

[jagthedrummer]

Doug, Chris, and Joanna from the city were here and we had a good discussion. Here are my notes.

For the flowable diagram:

Revenue Source => Fund => Department

Revenue Source is a new column that they will add to the revenue data.

Fund can be determined by Fund Code, in both the expense and revenue data.

Fund Code 001 == General Fund
Any other code == Non Discretionary Funds

In Expense data the first 3 digits represents the Department. They're still going to get us new columns in the expense data that gives us both a Department code and a Department description.

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On zoomable expense chart

Top level: Department (the new column) (Police, Fire, Parks & Rec, City Manager, Zoo, etc...)
Second level: Line Of Business
Third level: Program
Fourth level: New data (generated from Account) (Personnel, Professional Services, Supplies, Capital, etc...)

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They also talked about getting us some additional info that we could use to augment the zoomable chart. Things like "mission statement" for Departments, and success metrics for Programs and/or Line of Business.

[jagthedrummer]

@mascott Worth noting that the reason it's been hard to make high level sense of the data is due to the missing "Department" data that they'll be supplying us.

[jagthedrummer]

This document can be helpful for understanding how some of this stuff nests: http://okc.gov/finance/BudgetDocs/FY16_Adopted_Budget.pdf

[jagthedrummer]

We diagramed out a flow as you zoom in to the expense data:

[mascott]

I'm loving all of this. Thanks @jagthedrummer!

[energydev]

@jagthedrummer I'd potentially like to get involved with this project. I'd like to take an overall look at the code first. What's the link to the branch I should clone? Also, where in the code should I start looking first to get a feel for what's going on.

[jagthedrummer]

@energydev I believe that master is where you want to look. There's a little bit of stuff, like a budget timeline happening in the project itself, and then in the sandbox directory is a bit of code where we've started playing with a streamlined way of filtering/manipulating the data we get from them. The sandbox efforts are currently on hold while we wait for additional data from the city. @mascott is the project lead on this, so I hope he'll jump in here if I've said anything that isn't correct.

[energydev]

@jagthedrummer @mascot When I look at the master branch there are several directories with files plus files at the root level. Is there a file that is an equivalent of a home or starting page?

[jagthedrummer]

@energydev I believe it's _src/index.jade

[jagthedrummer]

Here's an email we just got from Doug Dowler with extra info. The attached zip contains 3 CSV files and one Excel file.

Sorry for the delay in getting our files to you. It is awfully busy around here.

We have added the new columns we discussed in the csv files for actual expenses and the FY16 budget. The new columns are Agency, Agency Name, Character (for expenses), Class Description (text for the character) and Operating or Non (for distinguishing between operating and non-operating budget – right now that column is blank because we will have to build a new table for that and wanted to get you the data sooner, hopefully we can incorporate that later).

We also have attached a file for Performance Information. We are hopeful that in the future the performance data can be linked so that when someone clicks on an expense category they can see what performance data goes with it.

I am sure there will be questions so just let us know. We are very appreciative of all the work you all are putting in on this project. Thanks a bunch!

Doug Dowler
Budget Director
City of Oklahoma City

Archive.zip

[mascott]

Awesome! Thanks @jagthedrummer