Bermuda Budget Data

This repository contains machine-readable data from the offical budget of the Goverment of Bermuda, suitable for analysis with tools like Excel, scripts, and databases.

This data is officially disseminated, first in a 300+ page hard-copy to legislators, and then eventually as a PDF file, sometimes with OCR and sometimes without.

In addition detailed Excel files were obtained via a PATI (Public Access To Information) request from the Bermuda Government.

This project compiles most of that data into organized data sets via a combination of copying and pasting from Excel files, and manual data entry.

Data Files

The data is provided in two formats: tab-separated text files under the directory data-csv; and SQL statements with an accompanying table schema in data-sql (in MySQL dialect). The SQL files include some data-scrubbing logic to address issues in the original source data.

In fact, the text file data is generated by loading a MySQL database, then dumping the tables into files.

Data Structure

Budget data is organized as "summary" tables (by Ministry and department), or by "analysis" tables (by type of expense or revenue).

In addition, each table will show the following four numbers (referred to as DataVersion in the data files):

1. "Actual": the actual value from the fiscal year before last (the numbers for a fiscal year aren't finalized in time for the budget dats in the immediate following year).
2. "Original": the original budget estimate in the immediate prior fiscal year for this value. It should match the same number looked up under "Estimate" in last year's budget.
3. "Revised": the latest available data for this value from the immediate prior fiscal year.
4. "Estimate": the budget number for this fiscal year.

In the data files, each number appears on its own line ("unpivoted"), starting with the BudgetBookVersion (what year's budget was this data published in), along with the DataVersion code and the BudgetYear to which that number applies. So for example, the "Actual" numbers will always have a BudgetYear which is two years behind the BudgetBookVersion.

Summary Data

Summary data is provided for expenditure (expenses), revenue, head count (FTE), and capital expenses, by:

• Budget year; since the fiscal year starts in April expressed as the two years. it overlaps, e.g. 2003/04.
• Government Ministry.
• Budget book "Head", essentially a department in the Ministry. There is also a "head number" associated with each head. Head numbers are unique (I think!) across the whole budget book.
• Data version: Actual/Original/Revised/Estimate, as outlined above.

Sometimes Ministries are reshuffled, so the set of Ministries can be different in different budget years, and which Head belongs to which Ministry can also change.

Analysis Data

Analysis data is provided for expenditure and revenue.

Expenditure analysis numbers are by:

• Budget year.
• "Object Code", which is the type of expense, e.g. Salaries, Wages, Rentals, etc.
• By Actual/Original/Revised/Estimate data version.

Revenue analysis numbers are by:

• Budget Year.
• "Head", which is really the name for related groups of revenue types, e.g. "Taxes", or "Fees". This is not the same as the "Head" in the summary tables. Although the name is a bit confusing it was kepty to match what that tables show in the printed (or PDF) budget books.
• Revenue Description, which is the type of revenue at the next level of detail, such as "Customs Duty" or "Liquor Licenses".

The analysis table object codes and revenue descriptions should be similar across budget years.

Other Notes

Since the Budget Books are prepared manually each year, and the process of collating this data has been quite manual and a patchwork of approaches, you should not be surprised to see inconsistencies across years.

Also, if you compute things like grand totals and subtotals, they may not match what you see in the printed budget books due to things like rounding or even a little bit of human error.

Heads and business units can sometimes move between ministries, due to reorganizations. Sometimes numbers are not directly comparable across diffrent years after these changes.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to the Bermuda Government, and Louis Galipeau and Andrew Simons of the Bermuda.IO project, who made the first set of online PDF Budget Books and other financial reports available. Their site is now offline but you can find some of it on the Wayback Machine