Toronto now publishes Activity level open data for its operating budgets
Starting with discussions in 2004, and formal programming in 2008, Toronto has created a system called FPARS (Financial Planning, Analysis and Reporting System) to support budgeting and financial controls (see the FPARS section of budgetpedia.ca/resources). One of the fundamental concepts of this system is to re-frame data according to ‘services’ (functional collections such as ‘community recreation’) rather than ‘programs’ (organizational units such as division and agency ‘sections’ and ‘units’). That is, the City is attempting to replace ‘structural’ reporting with ‘functional’ reporting, to try to be more meaningful to the public. We have over the last few years started to see impacts of this system. For example program analyst notes now have standard sections describing program services. Leaving aside some issues that arise with this, this blog tries to provide an overview of this information.
The City releases this information through the open data portal (see the operating budget section of this portal).
For an example of a service view, see the Parks, Forestry and Recreation Division breakdown of services on the budgetpedia.ca explorer (chart):
Notice that the Parks, Forestry, and Recreation budget of ~$457M is broken down into its three component services of Community Recreation, Parks, and Urban Forestry. Each of these is in turn broken out into their activities. In the case of the Community Recreation service, you will see a breakdown into Community Development, Instructional Recreation Programs, Leisure Recreation Programs, Permitted Activities & Recreation Facilities, and Recreation & Facilities Planning & Development.
Each chart on the Budgetpedia Explorer page contains an info button, which will take you to detailed City analyst notes on the topic of the chart. The analyst notes should contain sections on each service and activity listed in the charts. The analyst notes for the Parks, Forestry and Recreation division for example can be seen here.
Some divisions, such as the Treasurer’s office, have a high degree of granularity:
Others, like smaller divisions such as the Auditor’s office, have no breakdown at all. The Police service has no breakdown because they choose to be aloof of such practices 🙁.
For 2017 the following 26 programs have breakdowns to the Service -> Activity level: Fire; Court Services; Long Term Care; 311, Paramedic; Employment Services; Corporate Accounts; Housing; Clerk; Planning, Finance, Admin; Toronto Building; Fleet; Engineering; Water; IT; CFO; Facilities; Transportation; PFR; Economic Dev & Culture; Licensing; Social Development; Finance, Admin; Waste; Treasurer.
The following 18 programs have breakdowns only to the Service level: TTC; WheelTrans; Parking; Arenas; Community Centres; Library; Exhibition; Theatres; Zoo; Yonge-Dundas; Heritage; Police Board; Affordable Housing; Children; Health; City Manager; City Planning; Legal.
The following 8 programs have no service breakdown: Conservation; Police; City Council; Mayor; Auditor; Lobbyist Registrar; Ombudsman; Integrity Commissioner.
So there apparently there is not yet comprehensive uptake of this approach among programs.
In addition to Activities, the open data budget version also includes standard cost elements for each Program, Service, and Activity. Budgetpedia summarizes these at every chart level. See for example the cost elements associated with the PFR Instructional Recreation Programs (mostly Salaries and Benefits in this case).
This is all a good start at summarizing more detailed levels of the budget, and matching data in a summary way that appears in detail form in the analyst reports. It provides some more insight into the components and weight of the services and activities undertaken by programs, which can only help to make City services more relatable to Torontonians.
At budgetpedia.ca, we would like to see release of data to the cost centre level (the City has about 13,000 of them) so that citizens can stand in front of, say, a community centre, and be able to look up exactly what the cost and revenue components of the centre are. We think, and are told by users, that this level of detail will provide the evidence required to elevate debate to a more highly informed level.
But this disclosure to the Activity level is a good start.
The best way to become familiar with the City’s budget is to explore. For Activity breakdowns, go to budgetpedia.ca/explorer, and then for Datasource choose “Detail: open data files 2011–2017”.
Henrik Bechmann is the project lead of budgetpedia.ca. The opinions expressed here are his own.
