Governments Embrace Financial Transparency With New Suite of Apps from Socrata
Seattle, Washington (PRWEB) January 15, 2015 -- Socrata (http://www.socrata.com), the world leader in cloud solutions for open data and data-driven government, today announced that its new suite of Financial Transparency applications, which currently includes Socrata Open Budget™ and Socrata Open Expenditures™, has been adopted by over 50 public-sector customers in just nine months.
The customers embracing the Financial Transparency suite of applications include these large governments: State of California, State of Hawaii, State of Iowa, Montgomery County (MD), Alameda County (CA), Prince George’s County (MD), City of Boston (MA), City of Baltimore (MD), and City of Baton Rouge (LA).
Smaller cities and counties that have chosen Socrata to power their financial transparency initiatives include: City of Davenport (IA), City of Lawrence (KS), City of Lindsborg (KS), City of Salem (MO), Deschutes County (OR), City of Santa Monica (CA), City of Weaverville (NC), City of Hickory (NC), City of Redmond (WA), City of Emporia (KS), City of Cape Girardeau (MO), City of Erie (CO), City of West Hollywood (CA), City of Cambridge (MA), City of Santa Rosa (CA), City of San Fernando (CA), Culver City (CA), Solano County (CA), Stutsman County (ND), and Macoupin County (IL).
Designed for quick deployment and citizen empowerment, Socrata’s Financial Transparency suite of applications is a first, because it helps governments of all sizes to publish budget and spending data quickly, economically and in a consumer-friendly way. Rather than wading through hundreds of pages of scanned documents – including legal and financial information – citizens and staff see budget and spending data in vivid color. The charts, graphs and images are attractive, navigable and easy to understand and consume.
“The success of the Financial Transparency suite over the past 9 months is one of the best examples of Socrata’s growth, momentum and leadership in the rapidly expanding open data market,” says Kevin Merritt, CEO and Founder of Socrata. “This may be one of the fastest-selling government products in history, and what’s most remarkable to me is that both big and small governments are adopting and deploying these applications.” Adds Merritt, “Each of these public-sector organizations has financial data that it wants to make public in the name of transparency and trust. This is a key part of the current revolution in data-driven government that we’re seeing all over the world.”
Adds Fariba Kassiri, Assistant Chief Administrative Officer of Montgomery County (MD), Socrata’s design partner for its Financial Transparency suite of applications, “We use open data to provide a centralized, trusted source of information to our residents and businesses. Now, with this suite of Financial Transparency apps, we can share the dollars-and-cents data that explains everything about all aspects of our services and operations, all powered by our dataMontgomery platform and presented in a way that doesn’t require financial expertise to get answers. That’s a big step towards a more transparent, accountable, data-driven and engaged government.”
Smaller governments agree with Kassiri. For example, Hickory, North Carolina, a city of 40,000 situated between Asheville and Charlotte, is using Socrata Open Budget to educate the public. Hickory recently passed two bonds, which will fund a number of capital projects it is rolling out over the next 10 years. Socrata Open Budget provides a platform to keep citizens informed and, hopefully, promote voter turnout for these projects.
“Socrata’s Open Budget product was our first venture into the open data paradigm. We chose Socrata because its elegant and intuitive user interface provides our community with the best tools to visualize and understand the City’s budget,” explains Mike Woods, Hickory’s IT Director. “Using Socrata to present data directly from our SunGard Public Sector database brings together two Best-of-Breed applications.”
Looking ahead, Socrata’s suite of Financial Transparency applications is expected to expand in 2015. New apps in the suite will allow governments to put their contracts, payroll and capital projects online.
On Wednesday, January 21st at 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. PT, Socrata is hosting a free webinar featuring the Town of Erie, Colorado - one of Socrata’s most recent customers to choose its Financial Transparency apps to shine a spotlight on financial transparency.
ABOUT SOCRATA
Socrata is the world leader in cloud solutions for open data and data-driven governments. Its innovative customers include the cities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Melbourne and Eindhoven; the states of New York, Illinois and Texas; US Health and Human Services; Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; the UN, the European Commission, and the World Bank. Socrata’s solutions – including the recently launched Open Data Network™ which unleashes the full potential of government data to help drive connected communities around the world – assist government leaders in improving transparency, modernizing citizen access to information and bringing data into every decision, all with unprecedented speed and cost savings. Delivered as turnkey services, Socrata’s technologies unlock data trapped in enterprise silos, mobilize and transform it into useful information that everyone can easily access, visualize, share and reuse. To learn more about Socrata, visit http://www.socrata.com.
Contact
Bill Glenn
VP, Marketing
Socrata
bill(dot)glenn(at)socrata(dot)com
(206) 465-3228
Steven Gottlieb, Socrata, http://www.socrata.com, +1 (206) 427-9591, [email protected]
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