The city of New York will be expanding the data available on its Checkbook NYC portal to include subcontractor payments. Women and minority owned business contract data will also be included on the portal. The inclusion of such data is a significant step toward greater transparency – one not found in many other municipalities in the US.
Checkbook NYC now has “featured dashboards” – or dedicated screens – which will help M/WBEs and other subcontractors pinpoint which vendors are awarded city contracts and monitor when agencies pay out money on specific projects. Checkbook NYC users can use these dashboards to follow the life of a contract from master agreements through modifications and payments, seeing how contracts change over time.
Additionally, the public will now be able to see how vendors who have won contracts disburse those awards to subcontractors in real time.
According to the new data, New York City has spent a total of $432 million – or about 4.4 percent of available dollars – with M/WBEs to date in fiscal year 2015, which began on July 1, 2014. City Comptroller Scott Stringer says he wants to improve money spent with vendors that have a more diverse ownership.
“Increasing how much our City spends on M/WBEs is a crucial tool in expanding economic opportunity and increasing competition across all five boroughs. This new level of transparency will tell us whether agencies are reaching our City’s spending goals with these vendors.”
