BudgetAus has gone from a task to help me cut my teeth as a novice programmer into a major project with its own domain name over the last three months. I decided that BudgetAus needed its own blog and Twitter account before I stabilise and promote it so that I can begin to get feedback from users.
I also went back to my original site structure with each search type having its own page for the sake of simplicity but left them all on the one page for the Smartphone version.
There have been many new features added to BudgetAus over recent weeks which have kept me very busy! You can search BudgetAus by Portfolio, Agency, Program, Scheme and now also by Tag. I think the Tag search will become the most popular as the (1000+) Schemes have been purposefully tagged so that users do not have to figure out by trial and error which Schemes naturally group together.
An example is the tag environment which encompasses all the various terms that have been used in the Portfolio Budget Statements to refer to environmentally related policy such as 'green', climate, carbon, renewable and sustainable.
This does not make the Program, Agency or Scheme searches redundant, it all depends on what information people are looking for. There's still some tweaking and testing to do but I am looking forward to seeing what people make of the site and what it can tell them about the budget.
