From IT News Online: STERLING, Va., June 12, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — The New York City Comptroller announced at the Personal Democracy Forum press conference that Checkbook NYC, a financial transparency tool developed by REI Systems, is now open-sourced and available for download by other city and state governments.
Checkbook NYC is an online financial transparency website that provides up-to-date information about New York City’s revenues, expenditures, contracts, payroll, and budget. The website provides unprecedented access to NYC government financial data, enabling citizens to track how NYC spends its $70 billion annual budget. Built on the Drupal open source content management platform, Checkbook NYC’s data warehouse is updated daily, contains more than 50 million financial transactions, and is growing at a rate of approximately two million transactions per month. A comprehensive national study, conducted by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG), ranked Checkbook NYC as one of the top transparency websites in the country. “We built this for a simple reason: shining a bright light on government spending helps root out waste and ensures that tax dollars are spent wisely,” said NYC Comptroller, John C. Liu.