Business intelligence for government transparency: where the money goes: the transparency and spending strategies adopted by the state of Texas could serve as templates for other government initiatives.

• Author: Combs, Susan
• Position: Best Practices

The state of Texas' Where the Money Goes program won a GFOA Award for Excellence in 2009.

Government spending is often seen as impenetrable and unknowable. But taxpayers have the right to know how their money is spent, so government must be held accountable. The state of Texas launched an online expenditure database and then embarked on an effort to open the books in other innovative ways, giving citizens access to information that will allow them to scrutinize spending and join the conversation on their state's future.

The state's Where the Money Goes Web site offers transaction details for all state agencies and higher education institutions. It provides an intuitive interface and search capability for anyone who is interested in efficient use of tax dollars and seeing how the state's money is being spent. As the data was being compiled, duplication in state contracts was discovered and merged, saving the state $4.8 million, and an additional $3.8 million in expected savings was identified.

TRACKING WHERE THE MONEY GOES

The Texas comptroller's office continuously pores over budgets in keeping the books for the agency and for the state of Texas as a whole--a large task, and one that should be open to scrutiny. The comptroller's office launched Where the Money Goes in June 2007, providing a window into broad spending categories for all state agencies and institutions, as reported to the comptroller's office. Today, the site gives the public 24/7 online access to up-to-the-minute information on agency expenditure information down to the transaction level, including check registry amounts, dates, payers, payees, and contract and grant information. Site visitors can a[so generate custom reports, view extensive data sets, and download that information to their personal computers.

Beyond the benefits of giving the public access to expenditure data, the comptroller's office discovered an internal benefit to the emphasis on transparency: it made the agency' operations more transparent to agency employees. Broad access to detailed, centralized, and easily navigable information gave all comptroller's office employees the ability to identify redundancies, inefficiencies, and other areas for improvement.

As a result of that free flow of information, the comptroller's has identified $8.7 million in efficiencies and savings, and that number is still growing. For example, a close look at contracts for toner cartridges revealed a simpler and smarter way...