Public Budget Transparency Explorer
Turn published government or university budget documents into something a non-expert can explore: where the money goes, how it changed, and how planned spending compared with actual. Most of the work is the extraction pipeline, and that is a real contribution.
Beginner
Achievable by one student in a semester with familiar tools.1 semester, 2 students
5 to ship
3 optional extrasSuggested stack
What you should ship
- Extraction pipeline converting published budget documents into a normalised relational schema
- Category mapping handling classifications that change between years, so trends stay comparable
- Explorer interface supporting drill down from top level to line item
- Year on year comparison including planned against actual where both are published
- Data quality report documenting what could not be reconciled and why
If you have time left
- Per capita and inflation adjusted views
- Comparison across several institutions or municipalities
- Open API and bulk download so others can build on the cleaned data
The problem
Budgets are published and are effectively unreadable: hundreds of pages of tables in PDF, with categories that change name between years so nothing can be compared. Technically public, practically inaccessible.
What you build
An extraction pipeline, a normalised schema, category reconciliation across years, and an explorer.
Where the real work is
Extraction and reconciliation, not visualisation. Budget PDFs have inconsistent table layouts, merged cells, footnotes that modify figures, and totals that do not always add up. Getting this right is unglamorous and it is the contribution, because the cleaned dataset is more valuable than the interface on top of it.
Why it suits a team wanting something achievable
No modelling risk, no research uncertainty. The path is clear and the difficulty is in doing it carefully, which means you can plan it and finish it.
The honesty feature
A data quality report. State which figures you could not reconcile, where totals disagree with the sum of their parts, and what you had to assume. This is what separates a trustworthy civic data project from one that quietly launders errors into confident charts.
Scope warning
One institution or one municipality, several years. Do not attempt a national comparison; the classification differences will consume the whole semester.
Ideas and guidance, not finished projects
These are project ideas and scoping guidance, published free for students to use as a starting point. I do not build, write, or sell final-year projects, and I do not complete coursework for anyone. Take an idea, make it yours, and build it.
Not sure this one fits you?
I help students pick an idea that matches their skills and their deadline, then scope it down until it is finishable. Guidance only, never done for you.
Stuck on something specific?
Writing only gets you so far. If you want an answer to your situation rather than the general case, book a session and we will work through it together. Every session is free; a few slots open each week.
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