Douglas County, Kan., Launches Open Budget to Crea

SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwired - Jun 29, 2017) -  Douglas County, Kansas government launched Open Budget Douglas County enabling citizens easy access to see how county tax dollars are spent.

The site is available at http://budget.douglascountyks.org .

"Our community now has online access and easy-to-understand information to see how our budget reflects the values and priorities of the people of Douglas County," said Mike Gaughan, Chair of the Douglas County Board of County Commissioners.

With the launch of Open Budget, Douglas County joins best-in-class digital governments dedicated to ensuring that financial data is easily accessible and understandable to its residents. Rather than wading through hundreds of pages of scanned legal and financial documents, residents and government staff can now see financial data contextualized in charts, graphs, and visualizations that are attractive, navigable, and easy to understand.

Opening up the county's fiscal information to residents and local businesses will usher in new transparency for the county. Until now, Douglas County shared its annual budget in PDF files, which lacked summary-level information such as total revenues and expenditures by fund, department, or sub-department. The application will serve as a valuable tool internally, helping county commissioners and internal staff manage their budgets effectively.

Douglas County partnered with Socrata , a leading data platform provider for government bodies, in developing the site.

"Our vision is that Open Budget will be a regularly visited and utilized application and a valuable source of information for citizens, elected officials, and Douglas County staff," said County Administrator Craig Weinaug.

Tweet this: New open budget invites the public to explore @douglascountyks's annual budget https://goo.gl/t7eqxD

About Socrata Socrata is the market leader in making existing government data discoverable, usable, and actionable for government workers and the people they serve. Socrata provides a data-as-a-service platform and cloud applications exclusively for city, county, state, and federal government organizations. Socrata delivers unprecedented, data-driven innovation and cost-savings by bringing together disparate systems and leveraging the cloud to dramatically enhance the effectiveness of government programs, to improve quality of life for residents, positively impact local economies, and achieve excellence in government operations. Socrata solutions are designed and developed to meet strict government standards and is the first company of its size to achieve Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Authority to Operate. The technology is optimized on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector cloud and delivered using the exclusive Socrata Blueprint Methodology .