Whitewater’s Online Commitment to Budget Transparency

There’s very good news for Whitewater, as the City of Whitewater’s budget information from 2000 to 2012 is now available online. Not only are the data available, but they’re easily accessible by department or particular item, interactively, and are also available for download.

An initiative like this is an unalloyed good for Whitewater. First, it’s right on principle as an expression of open & transparent government. Second, it’s sound practically as it allows more people to offer more suggestions for future budgets. A greater number of suggestions is preferable to fewer, just as a candid presentation of actual budgeting is superior to brief, necessarily selective descriptions.

This effort puts Whitewater well ahead of other communities for budget transparency, and is proof that Whitewater can be at the American forefront of open government projects.

Here are the links to the online budget data, by title and Web address, through work of Council President Patrick Singer:

Look at Whitewater, a Budget Breakdown form FY 2000-2012

and

http://s3.amazonaws.com/lookatwhitewater/index.html

Below I have taken screenshots of the website (the links to the actual budget website are above – these are just photos to show what the site looks like).

Here’s part of the main page of the site:

Also on the main page, one finds links to download the data, or request information and offer suggestions about the site (including links to social media to follow for updates, for example).

The data are accessible by department and then by items within a department’s budget, as one sees in this example, below. Orange text appearing on a page takes readers to detailed information on that topic.

On the website, the data are organized by links, so that one can click one link and find more specific information about it. Unlike these screenshots, these actual pages are interactive.

All of this is sound and so very well done. This is a good step – and a big one – for open, and thus better, government. It’s an expression of transparent government about which all Whitewater should be justifiably proud.