Every open spending data site in the US ranked and listed
Lisa Evans (Guardian, UK) writes:
The Follow the Money 2012 report has this week revealed the good news that more US states are being open about their public spending by publishing their transactions on their websites. It has also exposed the states of Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Montana and Wyoming that are keeping their finances behind a password protected wall or are just not publishing at all.
A network of US Public Interest Research Groups (US PIRGs) which produced the report, revealed that 46 states now “allow residents to access checkbook-level information about government expenditures online”.
The checkbook means a digital copy of who receives state money, how much, and for what purpose. Perhaps to make sense of this ‘checkbook’ concept it’s useful to compare US and UK public finance transparency.
A lot of data to be sure and far more than was available as little as ten (10) years ago.
It is “checkbook-level” type information but that is only a starting point for transparency.
Citizens can spot double billing/payments or “odd” billing/payments but that isn’t transparency. Or rather it is transparency of a sort but not its full potential.
For example, if your local government is spending in its IT budget over $300,000 a year for GIS services and you see the monthly billings and payments are all correct and proper. What you are missing is that local developers, who have long standing relationships with elected officials benefit from the GIS services for planning new developments. The public doesn’t benefit from the construction of new developments, which places strain on existing infrastructure for the benefit if the very few.
To develop that level of transparency you would need electronic records of campaign support, government phone records, property records, visitor logs, and other data. And quite possibly a topic map to make sense of it all. Interesting to think about.