Ohio in 2014 launched a searchable database of the state’s expenditures, allowing residents to browse how their money was being spent by both the state and participating local governments. Government watchdogs view it as a model for something that could be applied across the nation.
“It’s a transparency initiative rooted in the concept of making the government small and the individual big,” said Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, who launched OhioCheckBook.com through his office.
The site, which allows users to search how government is spending money on things like food and travel, has been a hit in the state: Mandel notes that since its launch 16 months ago, 611 local governments and school districts in the state have volunteered to participate. From Dec. 2, 2014, to March 24, 2016, citizens had used the site to search through government expenditures exactly 488,937 times.
“In a simplified way, it’s essentially QuickBooks for government,” Mandel said.
QuickBooks, which helps users to file their taxes, is enabled by the uniform accounting system in use by the Internal Revenue Service. Ohio’s spending database is similar, though it is assisted by the fact that state agencies use uniform accounting systems. That’s a feat many state governments have not been able to accomplish.
“Ohio started out with an advantage,” said Hudson Hollister, the executive director of the Data Coalition, a D.C.-based trade association that helped Mandel’s office draft the regulatory language creating the system. “In the early 2000s, Ohio consolidated all of its financial systems into one. So it’s been easier for Ohio than it will be for other states, where there are multiple accounting systems run by different agencies.
“California has the worst transparency because it’s huge, and there are at least four different agencies in California that share financial management,” Hollister said. Nonetheless, he added, legislators in both that state and in Arkansas have reached out to his organization to explore the possibility of implementing similar systems.
“It’s not just about accountability,” Hollister said. “Another benefit is that it allows government to manage itself better by adopting a consistent data format.” One example of a benefit, Hollister said, is automated reporting. “If governments can adopt a consistent format, reporting tasks that used to be manual can be automated.”
The federal government, Hollister pointed out, is moving in that direction, thanks to the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act passed by Congress in 2014. “It said the federal government needs to impose a consistent data standard on everything by May 2017,” Hollister said.
The federal government implemented a more limited searchable database in 2007, but it does not compare to what transparency advocates see in the Ohio model. “Right now, it just has information about grants and contracts,” Hollister explained. “It does not contain internal information, like money spent on grantees or contractors.”
However, advocates hope that’s going to change as governments see the benefit of creating more uniform systems. Mandel said interest is indeed spreading, mentioning that statewide officials in Kentucky and Illinois had reached out to him for information on Ohio’s work, in addition to staff from the District of Columbia’s Office of Government Ethics.
“My ultimate goal, once we build up a critical mass of states, is to march to Washington and hopefully inspire the federal government to do a similar thing,” Mandel said.
He added that was a good thing not just for transparency and efficiency, but for inspiring faith in the democratic process. “This initiative is all about power to the people. It’s about taking taxpayers who felt powerless, and today making them feel powerful.
“I’ll be out to dinner with my wife, or at the drug or grocery store, and sometimes people will come up to me and tell me that they’ve been cynical about the democratic process for their entire lives, and seeing OhioCheckBook.com and having the power to hold politicians accountable is, for the first time in many years, renewing their faith in the process,” Mandel said.
