Reviewing Government Spending in Real-Time

Developing a website to make government records, especially financial records, transparent can be a monumental and expensive task.  That’s why I’m impressed by the pains taken by New York City to make its innovative Checkbook software available to all.

In January, 2013, an open source platform based on New York City’s Checkbook NYC 2.0 was introduced on YouTube by Comptroller John C. Liu.

The application is available now to any state or local government.  It enables the public to search easily from a dashboard and review government spending in real-time.  

Government contracts and underlying sub-contracts are absorbed and integrated into the website, so overspending can be observed as soon as it begins.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb98yCJPFSw

Karl Fogel of Open Tech Strategies, LLC wrote, “...the release of the Checkbook NYC code...is significant because of a larger initiative that accompanies it. Long before the code release, the Comptroller's Office started a serious planning process to ensure that the code could be easily adopted by other municipalities, supported by other vendors, and eventually become a long-term multi-stakeholder project...”

“Most cities run an internal financial management system (FMS) of some kind. The FMS manages the city's expenses, revenue, contracts, payroll, and budget, and naturally allows authorized access only. New York City's FMS just exports its non-sensitive data fields on a regular basis to Checkbook NYC—the export is filtered so that any sensitive data never even goes into the public-facing Checkbook system.”

New York’s Comptroller asked FMS vendors “...to contribute in-kind resources to Checkbook maintenance and development—especially to smooth the Checkbook deployment process. That way you'd lower the bar to Checkbook adoption for many cities at one stroke, and at the same time get multiple vendors involved in the code base.”

http://opensource.com/government/13/6/open-source-checkbook

Rebecca Williams of the Sunlight Foundation reported, “...in addition to the spending and expenditure information most similar platforms display, [NYC’s Checkbook] includes information about other essential financial datasets (including budgets, revenue, contracts, and payroll), as well.”

“...this might be the first instance of city officials proactively and premeditatively building civic applications with the intent of having other cities -- and cities with varied software vendors at that -- use and contribute to making that software better.”

http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/06/10/the-future-of-civic-software-reuse/

We should encourage adoption of Checkbook NYC 2.0 in state agencies, counties and municipalities throughout the country.

The Gap Between FOIA and Open Government

In view of the widening gap between FOIA (disclosure on request), which is too much about politics and trying without much success to update legislation, and Open Government (proactive disclosure), which is mostly about technology, perhaps we should devote less time to the former and concern ourselves more with the latter.

Open Government technology is being implemented in progressive cities throughout the country without waiting for legislative FOIA upgrades.  The drive to grow and prosper, including competition for new businesses, will compel communities to improve transparency.

I wanted to learn about less expensive technology available to smaller communities, so I asked Rebecca Williams at the Sunlight Foundation for help.  She compiled the following list of suggestions:

• Just putting data up on the government website for download! [in open formats like csv please]
• Ideascale (and other social media outlets) for citizen engagement
• Hosting data on GitHub
• Hosting data via Google Fusion tables
• CKAN data portals are free and open source, but you have to pay for the server
• Civic Data provides a free portal option via Accela (this is new and I [Rebecca] haven't seen it used yet)

If you know a village, township or small city council person, supervisor, mayor or manager wrestling with transparency issues, please pass along this list and let me know what feedback you get.

Michigan's FOIA problems and the solution

Pending bills to amend FOIA in Michigan would do little more than apply a few flimsy patches to an antiquated, tattered statute long overdue for a major overhaul.

The Michigan statute mandating public access to government records is flawed because it requires that written requests be made to an agency official with the de facto power to deny, delay or overprice the record requested.

Support FOIA reform that provides greater transparency through application of the latest records search technology, enabling information seekers to obtain records directly, i.e. without the assistance (or obstruction) of a government gatekeeper.

Many public officials, especially at the local level, complain about the cost and inconvenience of responding to FOIA requests. What those officials overlook (or hope we will overlook) is that, upon making a relatively small investment in software, most public records can be made available without cost or inconvenience simply by posting all non-exempt records online in searchable archives the moment they are created or acquired.

I suspect that it's not cost and inconvenience that raises the ire of some public officials so much as the fear that open access to government records will reveal foolishness, incompetence, wastefulness and crime. Perhaps an air of superiority and a sense of entitlement on the part of some public "servants" add to their aggravation.

The City of South Bend, Indiana, assisted by the Sunlight Foundation, has established a gold standard in transparency. It has enabled free, easy and direct public access to a remarkable catalog of city records.

This could be a model for open government, both at the local level and in state agencies. Take a close look at this outstanding achievement. It's worth considering for application across Michigan and throughout the country.

South Bend: Gold Standard in Transparency

The City of South Bend, Indiana, assisted by the Sunlight Foundation, has enabled free, easy and direct public access to a remarkable catalog of city records.   

By its mayor’s executive order last month (August, 2013), South Bend created an open data portal online.

South Bend’s policy implements and expands concepts in Indiana’s open records statutes.

This advance makes an extremely wide (and still expanding) range of information available in a user-friendly format.  It refrains from exemptions common in other jurisdictions.  The executive order also specifies the nature of the technology to be employed. 

The city’s IT specialists are directed to apply “best practices.”  The format is required to be “...any widely accepted, nonproprietary, searchable, platform-independent, machine-readable method...”

The city’s announcement quoted the software vendor (in part), “South Bend is joining an elite group of open data pioneers who are using the latest technologies to make public data more accessible and streamline collaboration between internal departments.”

This could be a model for open government everywhere, both at the local level and in state agencies.  Take a close look at this outstanding achievement.   I think it's worth endorsing for adoption throughout the country.

https://data.southbendin.gov/

http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/08/29/south-bend-indiana-signs-open-data-policy/