As a way to enrich stories, Lanacion.com adapted it´s CMS to integrate data as context in our content topical tags. Every news application or data platform we develop must be structured with this in mind so data as context can be distributed in topical or persons tags.

To do this, we first normalize names and then cross them with our TAGS database, and those that are in both datasets are automatically augmented by data or direct urls to our news applications.

For example: in a Legislator´s tag: her Statement of Asset, her path in politics, and even her profile can be presented, together with all the reporting.

Example 1) Person´s TAG: this is Elisa Carrio´s TAG – home page in Lanacion.com

This is the link to our Statements of Assets news application – Elisa Carrió statements of assets page

Elisa Carrio´s Political path from another of our news application “Laberinto Político”

We partnered an NGO that monitors legislative transparency Fundación Directorio Legislativo, and they make every year the Book “Directorio Legislativo” and a web site with structured profile data from Congressmen and Senators. So other link that serves to learn more of that legislator is the “Ficha en Directorio Legislativo”, and it looks like this:

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In Argentina, where we don´t have an access to information law yet, LA NACION and other three NGO´s that work towards transparency (Poder Ciudadano, ACIJ and Fundación Directorio Legislativo) worked together to develop the first site concerning the heritage of public servants, making the information accessible to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection.

The work included more than 30 volunteers manually entering data and generating a structured and searchable dataset from scanned PDFs. The project included all of LA NACION DATA team, using  collaborative tools, coordinating cross checking procesess and 6 full day check-a-thons that included the volunteers.

As they assume their public duties, public officials in Argentina,  are required to fill out a statement declaring their assets and then they are asked to update that information every year, while they’re in office. Even though the records are public, the information was not easily accessible to ordinary citizens, and of course when asked, it were given in print copies.

Declaraciones Juradas Abiertas was born in a unique political scenario. A new law regulating public officials’ affidavits was passed, which omits asset information of the children and spouses of public officials in future affidavits, reducing the amount of information previously available. The family asset situation is vital to create a chart of the current patrimony of a public servant for an illicit gain investigation. The application, which was launched on Sept. 28 (International Right To Know Day)  includes 1540 affidavits from more than 800 public officials (the members of President Cristina Fernández’s cabinet of ministers, legislators and judges, among others). It contains detailed information about their financial assets and properties over the years.

The interactive application that allows users to read a large volume of information and do comparisons, with an easy visual interface, includes the possibility to explore every original PDF document in detail, using DocumentCloud.

After the requests of the statements of assets was made to the Anticorruption Office (OA) and other offices, all the information came in print and in boxes. Each file was around 5/7 pages long.

The priority was given to the affidavits of the most relevant seats of each power and to the candidates for october 2013 legislative elections.

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In  March 2012 we launched our “Data Dashboard” or Data Store.

This site hosts the datasets Lanacion.com is opening and is powered by “Junar” an open data platform. We integrated this platform that helps our readers download data, embed datastreams or share them in social media.

The platform has an API so than any user can download all data in a single action.

As a way to ease navigation and serve our users we are offering special catalogs for inflation in Argentina from different sources as this is a very controversial and sensitive information in Argentina.  Seguir leyendo →