Visual Government

Imagine a citizen-friendly visualization of your town's budget.

ajones

Albemarle County, VA has their own Visual Budget

by

With the help of Smart Cville‘s Lucas Ames, Albemarle County, Virginia has their own Visual Budget.

oncbs19The launch got great press:

Our press release: http://smartcville.com/smart-cville-and-albemarle-county-launch-visual-budget-tool/

County release: https://www.albemarle.org/navpages.asp?info=release&ID=20686

TV: http://www.newsplex.com/content/news/Albemarle-County-is-finding-new-ways-to-display-spending-habits-386700101.html (be sure to watch the great video and interview with Lucas.)

Newspaper: http://www.c-ville.com/new-app-shows-taxes-broken/#.V40wQI47RQ0

http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/online-budget-visualization-tool-aims-to-enhance-transparency-understanding/article_c3ec258a-51d9-11e6-ab0e-aba0dacddb9f.html
albemarle

Conversation in Civic Innovation: Financial Transparency and Citizen Engagement

by

civictechbos-1024x768

On July 20, Annie & Alan of VisGov were pleased to help organize and moderate the Conversation in Civic Innovation: Fiscal Transparency and Citizen Engagement at the Microsoft New England R&D (NERD) Center. The panel included five local experts on open data and government transparency:

  • James Milan, producer of Your Arlington Dollar on ACMi (Arlington Community Media Inc.) @acmitv
  • Mike Herbert, Ashland Town Manager @AshlandTwnMgr
  • Adam Langley, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy , Fiscally Standardized Cities database, @landpolicy
  • Christopher Dwelley, Co-Lead & Performance Manager, Citywide Analytics Team at City of Boston @chrisdwelley @cityofboston
  • Curt Savoie, Principal Data Scientist at Commonwealth of Massachusetts @CurtSavoie @MassachusettsIT

A main theme of the discussion was that numbers alone aren’t enough, that the data needs to tell a story, whether through meaningful visualizations, providing context, public discussions, and/or good journalism.

Conversations in Civic Innovation is a series of meetups sponsored by Microsoft New England and the Venture Café Foundation, Thank you @cathywissink  and @asprung of Microsoft New England for organizing!

Cn13HQSXEAAL_gU