The office of the New York City Comptroller has a great web site that provides a comprehensive look, updated daily, at nearly every check issued by the city. The current Comptroller web site is being updated to provide detailed information about the contracts related to each individual payment, city vendors and the contracts they’re working on, and how payments made to date stack up against each agency’s budget. The site will also include information about incoming revenues, audits, budget reports and other analysis produced by the entities responsible for monitoring the city’s finances.
City finances will be provided as an open-source project allowing software developers to utilize the information in unique and creative ways, which will increase the transparency and public access to New York City’s finance information. Nick Judd of Personal Democracy Media has written an article which contains more details about the revamping of the New York City Comptroller’s web site.
The open-source nature of this means that public information can be sorted and tracked in as many creative ways as talented people can develop. It would be great to see local elected officials champion similar projects. What do you think?
Thanks, Paul. Open gov marches on — and municipal government is no exception.
Great project, Paul. Thanks for sharing an example of Transparency in action!
Awesome project
Have you seen Lookatcook.com? I bet the OpenCity Apps team that built that site and you could trade a lot of notes.