---
redirect_from: /2013/11/launching-spending-stories-how-much-is-it-really/
title: 'Launching Spending Stories: How much is it really?'
authors:
- Neil Ashton
---
<a title="Spending Stories" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/94746900@N06/10952114463/"><img src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5486/10952114463_80c641f31a_z.jpg" alt="spendingstories" width="640" height="333" /></a>

<a href="http://spendingstories.org">Spending Stories</a> is a new way to put spending figures in their proper perspective. Developed by the <a href="http://okfn.org">Open Knowledge Foundation</a> and <a href="http://jplusplus.org">Journalism++</a> with funding from the <a href="http://knightfoundation.org">Knight Foundation</a>, Spending Stories is an app that helps citizens and journalists understand and compare amounts in stories from the news.

When we hear that the UK's school meals programme costs <a href="http://spendingstories.org/#/search/?q=6000000&amp;c=GBP">£6 million</a>, what does that really mean? It means, for one thing, that it costs about a fifth of the annual spending on <a href="http://spendingstories.org/#/search/?q=6000000&c=GBP&visualization=scale&title=Annual%20government%20spending%20on%20monarchy">the monarchy</a>.

Spending Stories draws out comparisons between amounts of money, giving users a context in which to understand how money is being spent across society while referencing the original news stories.

Users can enter a figure into Spending Stories and get a <em>scale</em> visualisation showing how it compares with spending stories from the app's database.

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/w39mMd5.png" alt="£700,000: scale visualisation" />

The app displays the big picture, and users can then click through to a <em>card</em> visualisation that shows how the amount relates to specific stories.

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/waBsP97.png" alt="£700,000: card visualisation" />

Users can filter stories to only show amounts that relate to the user's interests, for example <a href="http://spendingstories.org/#/search/?q=5000&amp;c=USD&amp;visualization=scale&amp;themes=aid">aid</a> or <a href="http://spendingstories.org/#/search/?q=5000000&amp;c=GBP&amp;visualization=scale&amp;themes=energy">energy</a>.

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/aB6UWS3.png" alt="Filtering stories" />

If users find news stories of interest, they can <a href="http://spendingstories.org/#/contribute/">contribute</a> these to the database in three easy steps and share them.

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/0RbRhuS.png" alt="Contribute new data" />

Due to the good availability of UK spending data in <a href="http://openspending.org">OpenSpending</a>, this first release of Spending Stories focuses on the UK. Spending Stories is, however, an <a href="https://github.com/jplusplus/okf-spending-stories">open source project</a> and can easily be forked and <a href="https://github.com/jplusplus/okf-spending-stories#how-to-translate-spending-stories">translated into other languages</a>.

We hope to help <a href="https://github.com/jplusplus/okf-spending-stories#how-to-install-spending-stories">Spending Stories sites</a> launch on their own and expand with new features and local news stories. At launch, we are already in touch with <a href="http://okfn.jp">Open Knowledge Foundation Japan</a> about the potential deployment of Spending Stories in Japanese.

If you would like to know more about the options for setting up a local Spending Stories site, <a href="http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/openspending">get in touch</a>.

