How to crowdsource MPs' expenses

The Guardian has launched a unique experiment in crowdsourcing .

Today the House of Commons has released thousands of MPs' receipts - 700,000 individual documents contained within 5,500 PDF files covering all 646 members of parliament. It's an enormous potential dataset - four years worth of expenses and every claim. Each MP's information could be up to 7MB of receipts covering their mortgages, second home purchases, duck houses and soft furnishings.

It's a huge release of information, which manages to be both extremely open and terribly closed at the same time. Open because it allows us unprecedented access to MPs claims over a huge amount of time. Closed because key address and personal details are blacked out and impossible to analyse.

What we're going to do is to open up this data to as many people as possible. We want you to help us analyse it and find the great stories buried within the photocopied handwritten receipts.

Using our system you will be able to find your MP - or any member, for that matter - and look at their records directly. This is where we want you to help out. For every page for every MP you will be able to:

comment on individual expenses
highlight ones of interest
tell us how interesting that receipt is
Help by entering the numbers on the page

Using that information, we will begin to be able to piece together a unique picture of how MPs claims have changed over time.

GO TO our MPs crowdsourcing app

DATA: all the latest MPs' claims listed - sortable list view
DATA: all the latest MPs' claims listed - standard Google spreadsheet
DATA: MPs' total expenses (if you have a Google account)
DATA: MPs' total expenses (if you don't have a Google account)
DATA: Lords expenses as a spreadsheet

Can you do something with this data? Please post us your visualisations and mash-ups below or mail us at datastore@theguardian.com