Tool for journalists: Recipes for 'cooking public budgets' to investigate corruption

What is it? Cookingbudgets.com is a free resource to help journalists learn more about accounting tricks and spot stories in public budgets, published at the beginning of October.

The 40 recipes for cooking public budgets were written by data-driven journalism agency Journalism++ as part of the OpenBudgets initiative, a project promoting transparency and accountability in public spending funded by the European Union.

The site is designed as a satirical series of recipes with instructions for those working in public administration who "want to make some cash on the side".

How is it of use to journalists? Part of OpenBudgets' aim is to create a platform that collates and makes available all the local budgets from countries inside the EU.

The role of Journalism++ within the programme is to find out how journalists can make the most of this data.

After two years of speaking to journalists from different European countries, Journalism++ found that reporters working with these budgets needed a high level of expertise to find any irregularities, as the approach to accounting differed from country to country and even from city to city in the same country.

Simply comparing one city's budget with another's is unlikely to turn up meaningful leads because, unlike company budgets which tend to be standardised at a national level, public institutions manage their budgets in different ways, explained Nicolas Kayser-Bril, co-founder and chief executive of Journalism++.

A city that may appear to be in the black according to their own accounting style could be in the red if a different city's method is applied.

"It's extremely complex to analyse budget data and expenditure data to find corruption. You need to know a lot about accounting and about all the tricks that people will use to embezzle money."

The recipes format was used as a way to make the resources more appealing and accessible to journalists. "If we just do accounting tutorials, no one is going to read them."

How it works

Each recipe features information on the main actors likely to be involved, examples of real-life cases, and advice for journalists working on uncovering that particular type of scheme.

The recipes also highlight for how long someone could be getting away with each scheme and the amount of money they could be making from it, both averages based on the examples included in the resource.

Aside from the recipes, the website also features a 'basics' section to teach readers more about accounting, explaining how budgets are calculated.

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