Santa Fe, New Mexico has launched a new open data driven budget site using OpenGov. Users can view historical and current revenues and expenditures, examine trends over time and explore multiple views of financial data, breaking it down by fund, department, and type of revenue or expenditure.
Refreshingly the site contains budget data and not the usual open data faves like transit times or demographic data.
The city is paying the vendor just under $8,000 per year to maintain the open data portal, which includes several visualization tools. City officials say the site is part of a bigger transparency project coming to city government.
Still, there are some critics. According to a piece in the Santa Fe New Mexican New Mexico’s local open government watchdog group says the budget portal lacks critical information about vendor contracts and financial audits. But, city officials say they are working through a plan to add that information to the site.
“Transparency means more than just responding to public records requests – it’s about putting the power of data directly into the hands of the journalists and members of the public to whom we are accountable as public servants, and that’s exactly what we’re doing here,” said Mayor Javier M. Gonzales.
The full site is available here.
