Guardian ropes in readers to uncover expenses scandal

 

Gallery

By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 19 Jun 2009 at 08:57

The Guardian has launched a crowd-sourcing application to plough through the vast number of MPs' expense documents released by Parliament this week.

The formidable task of searching for stories in 700,000 pages of PDFs has been distributed to readers using the new online tool.

The Daily Telegraph obtained a copy of the files on 8 May this year, and ran a long series of scandal stories based on the data. However, The Guardian hopes that by harnessing the time and energy of its readers it will uncover new information.

Readers are asked to view a single page of the collection of documents and categorise it by clicking on the appropriate button; claim, proof, blank or other. Any interesting points can be noted by the user, for later review by reporters at the paper.

"Some pages will be covering letters, or claim forms for office stationery. But somewhere in here is the receipt for a duck island. And who knows what else may turn up. If you find something which you think needs further attention, simply hit the button marked 'investigate this!' and we'll take a closer look," explains The Guardian website.

At the time of writing all but 17,976 of the 77,252 documents had been reviewed by users. New documents will be gradually added.