Visualization of connections between politicians and orgs awarded gov contracts

sophieehill.shinyapps.io

36 points·roxanneonhacker··6 comments

(I am not from UK, so it is likely that I am missing a rather sizeable context. If that is the case, pointing out of the missing pieces would be appreciated)

Those connections are correlations, not causations, are they not? I fear they will be seen and used as the latter. Personally, I would love to see confidence intervals associated with the connections shown.

It is a map of correlations. For context, the UK government has been handing out extraordinary amounts of money to various companies without going through the official procurement / bidding process. Sometimes these contracts, for millions of pounds, are going to companies with zero experience in the thing they're getting paid for, or even companies that have been set up just to receive this contract. All of these companies have one thing in common though, donations to the tory party.

Aha, context. Thank you!

Wonder how difficult it is to strike a balance between through vetting of fund dispersal on one hand, and silly levels of bureaucracy on the other.

Maybe they should go meta, and pay a new company with no experience to vet the further fund distribution to other companies with no experience... :)

It's not that there is any illegality afoot.

It's that these sorts of metadata should be more widely available and pondered by voters when considering for whom to vote, if popular sovereignty is meaningful.

Seems like a good start. :)

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