California needs better open data on state government spending, lawmakers say

California lawmakers this week called for more transparency in state government, noting the federal government, local entities and other states have implemented open data initiatives that provide detailed accountability of how public money is spent.

“I feel like government is just so opaque and so complicated,” Assembly member Ling Ling Chang, R-Diamond Bar, told an audience at Open Data Day held Tuesday in Sacramento. “There’s so many layers of bureaucracy to get the right information,” Chang added.

Chang expressed her own frustration with the lack of information available about how money is spent by California’s state agencies and departments.

Putting that kind of data online would show “whether or not things are working in each department,” and help inform her decisions as a lawmaker, she said. Continue…

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