Financial transparency helps governments save money, improve taxpayer satisfaction, and boost approval ratings. Learn the five keys to quickly and cost-effectively deliver financial information online. Get an inside look into how to Socrata’s suite of financial transparency applications to share complex data in a user-friendly manner.

1. Financial Transparency Trailblazers
Thom Robbins
Socrata

2. The 4 Pillars of Value
Data Driven Government Framework
Data Driven
Decision Making
Operational
Efficiency
Citizen
Experience
Economic
Impact

3. What is Transparency?
Let’s Get Started
The concept of open data
and public sector data
transparency is hardly new.
Providing constituents
with access to the important
information that impacts
their lives and communities
is not just good policy,
it’s common sense.

4. What’s the benefit?
“States with transparent websites
often realized significant financial
returns on their investment. The
savings coming in forms big and small
- more efficient government
administration, more competitive
bidding for public project and less staff
time spent on information requests, to
name just a few - and can add up to
many millions of dollars.”

5. Why Financial Transparency?

6. Improves
Government
Builds
Public Trust
Strengthens
Citizen
Engagement
Reduces
Operating
Costs
Supports
Data-Driven
Decisions
Promotes
Economic
Activity
Why Financial Transparency?

7. Negotiating contracts and increasing competition
 Texas was able to renegotiate its copier machine lease to save $33 million over three years. The state was also able to negotiate prison food
 Increased competition, partially resulting from the launch of Florida’s contract database, has allowed the state to re-procure and re-negotiate contracts
at lower costs, saving $3.2 million between October 2012 and June 2013.4
Identifying and eliminating inefficient spending
 In Texas, the comptroller’s office used its transparency website over the first two years it was launched to save $4.8 million from more efficient
administration. For example, the office avoided spending $328,000 on a new mail sorter by instead setting up separate post office boxes to receive
different types of mail.
 Once South Dakota’s new transparency website was launched, an emboldened reporter requested additional information on subsidies that led
legislators to save about $19 million per year by eliminating redundancies in their economic development program.
Reducing costly information requests
 Mississippi estimates that every information request fulfilled by its transparency website rather than by a state employee saves the state between $750
and $1,000 in staff time.
 Massachusetts’ procurement website has saved the state $3 million by eliminating paper, postage and printing costs associated with information
requests by state agencies and paperwork from vendors. Massachusetts has also saved money by reducing staff time for public records management,
retention, provision, archiving and destruction.
 South Carolina open records requests initially dropped by two-thirds after the creation of its transparency website, reducing staff time and saving an
estimated tens of thousands of dollars.
Transparency websites are important and useful to residents
 New York’s transparency website has recorded 2 million visits since its launch in June 2008.
 Florida’s online checkbook for contracts has recorded 282,000 visits from 88,000 users since its launch in June 2012. The number of page views totals 5.5
million.
 Mississippi’s transparency website recorded more than 16,000 hits per month in 2013—a large increase from 8,000 hits per month in 2012.
 In 2013, users accessed Washington’s checkbook tool over 80,000 times, and ran approximately half a million reports.
Show me the benefits! (PERG 2014)

8. Enables users to navigate all
aspects of the capital and/or
operating budgets. Easily
view allocation at the
department, project, and
individual program level.
Track invoice-level detail to
better understand where
public money goes and which
vendors receive it.
Explore, compare and drill
down quickly on public
payroll by job type,
department and role.
Socrata Financial Transparency Suite
360 degree view of financial information (internal/external)
Open Expenditure Open Budget Open Payroll

9. Financial Transparency Deep Dive

10. Humanize Complex Financial Issues
Citizens can
find the data
that matters to
them most with
neighborhood-
level data.

11. Go Beyond Simple Transparency
Foster
an active
dialogue
with the public
around the
budget.

12. Promote Self-Service Access
Let citizens,
journalists,
and other
stakeholders find
the exact data
they need with
intuitive, easy-to-
understand drill
downs.

13. Tell your story
Tell your story
easily using
narration and
easily
consumable
visualizations

14. Data Driven Government Framework
Actualizing the Benefits
Citizen Experience Data-Driven Decision Making Operational Efficiency Economic Impact
Citizen participation in
government decisions
Systematic approach to tracking
and defining goals
Consolidation and re-use of apps,
data and services
Ability to deliver reduced data
transaction costs to businesses
User friendly digital services on
web, mobile and machine to
machine interfaces
Interactive public dashboard to
show performance data
Retirement of ageing systems,
and the ability to scale programs
more easily
Embrace “catalyst” role in the
emerging data economy; help in
incubating civic startups
Government services via location
aware mobile-apps
Data visualization and employee
facing analytics app to extract
insights
Reduction of labor intensive
information requests through self
service tools
Access to data that supports
academic research, driving new
discoveries
Integration with consumer web
services like Google Maps, Yelp,
and Zillow
Sophisticated data collection
capabilities including
crowdsourcing and social
networks
Economies of scale through
outsourced data storage
Public private data exchanges
Active promotion of data
transparency efforts
De-siloed system and centralized
web based-based access to data
Shift from custom-build system
and databases to service-
oriented-architecture (SOA)
Cross-department and inter-
governmental data federation
OUTCOME DIMENSIONS
DEFININGACTIVITIES

15. LEVEL OF DATA MATURITY
 Consumer-style web &
mobile interfaces
 Accessible storytelling
tools for Publishers
 Open Performance and
fact-based decision
making
 Robust, high-
performance data APIs
and developer
resources
 Automated, real-time
data publishing
 Turnkey, UX optimized
apps for high-value data
LEVEL 4
Data as
a Platform
 Automatic syndication to
the Consumer Web
 Built-in Apps Ecosystem
 Data for analytics and
predictive modeling
 Intra-government data
federation
 Open connectors to
enterprise systems
 Domain-specific peer
benchmarking
 Location awareness and
mobile by default
 Crowdsourcing data and
insight
 Sensor-based streaming
data and apps
 Data science-enabled
semantic discovery
across the network
LEVEL 5
The Open
Data Network
 Scattered spreadsheets
and PDFs online
 Legacy custom
web apps
LEVEL 1
Pre Open Data Silos
 Basic catalog of
downloadable files
(CSV, XLS, SHP, ZIP,
PDF)
 Metadata/Catalog APIs
LEVEL 2
The Catalog Phase
 IT resource-intensive
development project
 Manual data publishing
 Limited interactivity with
basic data tables, and
visualizations
 Social sharing
LEVEL 3
Basic Interactive Experience
Thinking about your program maturity

16. Value of SunGard and Socrata Together
@Socrata facebook.com/socrata http://www.youtube.com/user/socratavideos
Follow Us! Friend Us! Watch Us!
The “SunGard Open Government Data Agent”
has been developed by SunGard to work
with Socrata’s cloud and can be installed to
establish native integration between NaviLine
or ONESolution and Socrata applications.
Data Cloud™
SunGard Open
Government
Data Agent

17. Thank You!
Find Us!
Socrata.com
Follow Us!
@Socrata
Friend Us!
facebook.com/socrata
Watch Us!
http://www.youtube.com/user/socratavideos