Financial Transparency In The City of Mesa > Check It Out

PRESENTED BY THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET NOVEMBER 7, 2016

http://mesaaz.gov/city-hall/office-of-management-budget/presentations-reports

What is the goal of Financial Transparency?

• Build public trust in government
• Allow for a better understanding of how local government works
• Encourage citizen engagement

What do we mean by Financial Transparency?
Blogger's Note:
[ "Financial transparency" means that you are not actively hiding anything.]

Public access to a municipality’s financial information-May include budget information, summary of actual expenses and revenues, detail of actual expenses and revenues, forecast of future costs and resources-May include access to data, data visualizations and/or descriptive text -Relevant, timely and reliable information pertaining to the financial health of the municipality

Some of the ways the City of Mesa is meeting the goals of Financial Transparency

• Annual financial forecast presented/discussed with City Council at televised meeting
• Budget preparation process,
• City Manager proposed budget, department presentations, utility rate discussions all televised with documents accessible on City’s website
• Quarterly financial status report of both unrestricted operating funds posted to City’s website
• City Council adopted financial policies and other budget related information posted to the website
• Open data portal containing transactional financial information

Open Data

Addition of Full Financial Data
The current financial information available includes vendor information and local sales tax activity
-Effort is underway to add the datasets for full expenses and revenues
-The movement of the City from the old mainframe environment to the CGI Advantage software allowed the City to move in this open data direction for financials