Open checkbook
Payments to students for scholarships and other financial aid are aggregated to comply with privacy regulations. Information that is not permissible for posting under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act of 1967 and federal laws or regulations is not included.Ĭertain expenditures are aggregated and others are shown in detail depending on their nature. Therefore, it will not agree with amounts displayed in budget documents, financial statements, or supporting schedules, and is not intended to supplement or replace the annual audited financial report. The data is derived from general ledger accounting records and is raw, unaudited, and unconsolidated data. This database is intended to provide transparency to the people of Arkansas and our constituents of our stewardship of public resources.
#Open checkbook code
"It could cut back on aspects of political patronage as well.In compliance with Arkansas Code 6-61-137, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences has created a website to present a database of unaudited expenditure data. And the degree to which media pays attention to it," Bushouse said. "It depends on to what degree watchdog groups monitor that data and then use it as a basis for lobbying for change. The Republican and recently made use of the database to determine that dozens of state police troopers and corrections officers at state prisons earn more than $100,000 in in some cases more than $200,000.īrenda Bushouse, an Associate professor with the Department of Political Science and also the Center for Public Policy and Administration at UMass, said Open Checkbook could play an active role in shaping public policy. Quasi-public agencies, cities and towns and spending from tuition and fees collected by the University of Massachusetts, state universities and community colleges are also not included. It does not include summary information or protected data sich as child support, lottery winnings, debt service, or retirement health care.
It includes all state agencies, the judiciary (courts and departments), the legislature, independent boards agencies, boards, commissions and more. The Open Checkbook represents over 5 million records of actual data. The website includes pie charts that llustrate the overall spending by funding source and state spending breakout based on the Commonwealth's 2011 $51.3 billion financial report.
"While surely it was possible to gather data on spending by department, or by vendor, prior to the launch of this site, this new system appears to make access to that data easier for citizens or watchdog groups," Schweik said. Several other states, including Maryland and Alabama have undertaken similar open checkbook-style iniatives, Schweik said. The awards honor the most transparent government websites in the nation.
Meanwhile, Sunshine Review, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to government transparency, last week gave the Massachusetts state website an A+ rating in its third annual Sunny Awards. Schweik said he was attending a conference in Cape Town, South Africa in 2005 when he heard the director of Google Maps praise the MassGIS system. "I am not surprised that Massachusetts is doing this," Schweik said, adding that the state government and its Information Technology Division has a track record of striving to make data more readily available over the Web.Ī prime example, Schweik said, is the state Office of Geographic Infomation which has made state geographic data available online for years.