City Council
MEETING DATE: 11/16/2015
TITLE:
Title
Discussion of OpenGov Software for Access to Financial Data
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FROM:
Charlie McClendon, City Manager
RECOMMENDATION:
Recommendation
Staff recommends the City Council receive the presentation, discuss the material and provide direction to staff.
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BACKGROUND:
OpenGov software is a web-based platform that will provide financial and non-financial information to both internal and external users. It provides an intuitive, user-friendly interface that allows users to easily access the City's financial and budgetary information. Over 500 governments around the nation have launched the OpenGov platform in an effort to make government finances more transparent, build civic engagement and increase community trust. The software makes it easy for users to see financial and non-financial data in both a graphical/visual format as well as raw numbers, enabling simple analysis of trends over time as well as side by side comparisons.
DISCUSSION:
Staff has found that the City's financial management software, which meets the general ledger and accounting needs of the City is limited in the reports that can be generated and cumbersome for casual users to negotiate. It is difficult for departments to extract data into anything other than simple list-type reports and no graphical or trend analysis is built into the system. All analysis of the data must be performed by staff, primarily Finance Department staff, which can be very time consuming. In addition, this data is only available to staff that have login access to the system; it is not publicly available in any format except the City's published budget, annual financial reports, and cash disbursement reports.
OpenGov provides for operating departments and Council to access the City's financial data without needing any specialized software knowledge, provides ease of data analysis, and communicates complex budget and financial info...
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