Open data initiative

We are committed to being an open, accountable and transparent local authority. We want our customers to be able to use our data as freely as possible.

This is in keeping with the national open data initiative, which seeks to help all councils produce their data in a simple and standardised way, making it easier for the public to access and understand.

What does Open data mean?

Open data aims to provide non-personal information held by government, local councils and other public bodies as freely as possible.

Open data encourages data providers such as ourselves to publish spending data, our expenditure over £500, in both PDF and CSV file format.

What are PDF and CSV format files?

PDF stands for Portable Document Format. PDF was created by a company called Adobe in 1993. It has since become the open standard for sharing documents, irrespective of software, hardware or operating system. PDF is an easy type of file to read and print.

We have championed the use of PDF in releasing spending data as the software required to download (i.e. copy to your computer) and read PDF documents is available for free. You can download the software to read PDF documents here:

• Adobe.com - Download Adobe Reader

CSV is a Microsoft Excel based file and stands for Comma Separated Values or Character Separated Values. CSV is a simple text format for a database table.

CSV is useful in publishing data such as our expenditure over £500 as it is machine readable, and allows for easier reuse and analysis.

How is Northamptonshire County Council's data licensed?

Our spending data is available to reuse under the terms of the Open Government Licence for public sector information.

If you are intending to reuse our data, we ask that you visit the Data licensing page first.

How does Northamptonshire County Council decide what to publish in its spending data?

Publishing spending over £500 is a fantastic way for us to be open and transparent with our customers. However, we recognise that whilst releasing this data we need to make absolutely sure that payments to vulnerable customers are suitably censored to protect their details.

Government guidance states that we do not exclude payments to individuals in these groups from our publication, but replace their details in the 'Supplier Name' field with 'REDACTED PERSONAL DATA'. This is meant to increase transparency by returning more of the expenditure of a local authority, whilst still protecting vulnerable customers.

Council Budgets and Spending

Further details of how the council spends your money in its day-to-day business of running the county’s public services can be viewed at:

• Council Budgets and Spending section