Culver City Observer -

The City of Culver City announces that it has partnered with Socrata (www.socrata.com), which provides cloud solutions for open data and data-driven government, to implement the Socrata Open Budget and Open Expenditures applications.

These applications feature a suite of open data financial transparency tools for government, which are designed for quick implementation and citizen empowerment.

“Culver City has a long-standing tradition of openness and transparency, which are key ingredients in building accountability and trust in how we operate,” says Culver City Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells.

“The addition of the Open Budget and Open Expenditures suites provide an added avenue through which our City is leveraging technology to provide useful, accessible public information to advance government-citizen collaboration and innovation.”

The City Council has focused its efforts on ensuring as much financial transparency as possible. As part of this goal, the City Council created a Finance Advisory Committee (FAC) consisting of residents, business persons, and City labor group representatives. Working with the City’s Chief Financial Officer Jeff Muir, the FAC is undertaking a number of activities to ensure the City is employing best-practices in financial management and transparency.

FAC Chairperson Goran Eriksson commented, “I am happy to see this expanded functionality in Culver City financial transparency. I look forward to continuing to work with the FAC and City Council to further such efforts.”

Socrata believes that with its financial transparency suite of applications governments large and small are now able, for the first time ever, to publish budget and spending data quickly, economically, and in a consumer-friendly way.

Rather than reading through hundreds of pages of scanned legal and financial documents, citizens and staff see budget and spending data in vivid color. The charts, graphs, and images are attractive, navigable, and easy to understand.

“We’re moving to the next phase of the open data journey,” says Kevin Merritt, Founder and CEO of Socrata. “Open data has grown in utility and value over the past decade. It started out as a basic digital catalog; then it developed into a broader-based technology platform; and now it’s going to become the life-blood of connected networks throughout the world.”

Culver City’s Open Budget and Open Expenditure tools are available on the City’s website at http://www.culvercity.org or through the City’s Open Data Portal at http://data.culvercity.org.