Imagine being able to look into your town’s checkbook – down to the last penny. It’s the type of transparency that OpenGov has always aspired to empower, and that our technology can deliver.
Today, we are excited to announce that the state of Ohio is going to use OpenGov to make this level of financial transparency possible for every single Ohioan and every single local government in the state. We have joined with State Treasurer, Josh Mandel, to build on Ohio’s groundbreaking initiativeOhioCheckbook.com to provide Checkbook-level spending data to every city, town, school district, and other local governing entity in the state – 3,962 of them in total.
Once live, citizens across the Buckeye State will be able to follow how each and every one of their tax dollars is spent by their local government. In just a few clicks, Ohioans will be able to find out how much money their local government spent with a particular vendor, or which city departments spent the most, and then export and save search results for further use.
A number of municipalities in Ohio have already partnered with OpenGov to bring budget transparency to their constituents – including Cleveland Heights, Monroe, and Huber Heights. That’s in addition to the 275 governments across 37 states that we’re already working with to deliver greater transparency.
Ohio has already set a gold standard for financial transparency with its state-level OhioCheckbook.com database, but this is the first time that any state has sought to expand transparency to every level of local government.
Today’s announcement is yet another milestone in OpenGov’s history. Over the past year, a number of major cities across the United States have launched transparency initiatives on the OpenGov platform, including Miami, Pittsburgh, and Minneapolis – joining customers like Los Angeles, New Haven, and California Polytechnic State University. In total, our customer base grew by 500 percent in 2014.
We are so honored to work with Treasurer Mandel and the state of Ohio in this effort – using cutting-edge technology to realize a value as old as our nation: that government should be “of, by, and for the people.”
It’s a model for the country – one that we look forward to bringing to other states from coast to coast.