What does the circular graphic show?
The graphic shows the volume of purchases made by the federal government in one year. The colors represent the different departments. The inner circle indicates the division among the departments, while the outer circle with lighter shades details the distribution among the different offices within the department. A click on the graph zooms in on a department or office. The list of main suppliers and the purchases by category then update with information on the chosen entity.
Why are some of the suppliers unknown?
The administration was only compelled to disclose the names of the forty largest suppliers in each department. This means it is possible that some suppliers, important to a federal office but not among the forty largest suppliers of a department, do not appear in the data.
Where does the data come from?
The data used in this application comes from the federal administration.
SonntagsZeitung and
Le Matin Dimanche requested access to the data in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act. At first the government refused to name the suppliers, citing business confidentiality. The case was then brought before the Federal Court which on the 2 December 2015,
decidedthat the goverment must make the information public.
Can I download the data?
Le Matin Dimanche and
SonntagsZeitung make the data available. Click
here to download the original data (PDF) and click
here to download the data as CSV files. To find out more about how we prepared the data, click
here.
The code that was developed for the application is available
here, under BSD license.
Contact
Questions, comments, suggestions: cellule-enquete[at]lematindimanche.ch
Credits
Visualization: Florian Evéquoz (
Datastory), Noele Illien, Alexandre Haederli (Le Matin Dimanche / SonntagsZeitung)
Research: Titus Plattner, Martin Stoll, Christian Brönnimann