PHOTO: New Yorkers can examine the city budget by visiting nycopendata.socrata.com. Courtesy of the Office of the Mayor
By Forum Staff
Mayor Bill de Blasio, the Office of Management and Budget, and the City Council last week announced that the data supporting the Big Apple’s $82 billion budget is now available to the general public online.
According to the administration, OMB worked with the Council to make key budget documents human and computer searchable, instead of printed or in lengthy PDFs, at nycopendata.socrata.com.
“When agencies make the commitment to make their data machine-readable, it unlocks value for users all across the City, inside government and out” said Dr. Amen Ra Mashariki, chief Analytics officer. “From the City Record Online to this important data release by the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget, New York City continues to deliver on providing meaningful access to important data for all New Yorkers.”
The Council in April requested a searchable online budget in its official Response to the Mayor’s Fiscal Year 2017 Preliminary Budget:
“The budget is the most important public policy the City regularly makes. As such its transparency is crucial to helping New Yorkers understand how the City spends and raises funding. While OMB publically provides many budget documents, all of them are in portable document format (PDF), making analysis of them cumbersome at best and impossible at worst. Like other agencies, OMB should publish Excel files of its documents such as the supporting schedules, departmental estimates, and other applicable documents.”
According to the Mayor’s Office, the data complements the extensive budget documents already published online by OMB.
“Transparency is an essential part of our continued commitment to making the Council’s work more accessible to New Yorkers,” said Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. “This update to the Open Data Portal allows the public to access more information about the City budget than ever before. I thank Finance Chair [Julissa] Ferreras-Copeland and Council Member Ben Kallos for their strong advocacy on behalf of open government and look forward to continuing to work with the de Blasio Administration to make government more accessible.”
