Garcetti Launches Interactive Budget Website

LOS ANGELES — On March 19, Mayor Eric Garcetti launched a new website that makes it easier for people to review the city’s finances by offering interactive graphs of the current and past budget, including multi-year trends and departmental revenue and expenditure details.

Garcetti’s budget website is at www.lamayor.org/openbudget and uses the cloud-based OpenGov platform. It is being launched as Garcetti prepares to release his first budget as mayor, which will be available in April.

Garcetti’s back to basics agenda is focused on making city government more efficient, responsive, transparent and accountable, and he has used technology as a key way to achieve this. The new budget information site compliments ControlPanelLA, the web tool launched late this past year by Controller Ron Galperin.  ControlPanelLA is a searchable database of actual expenses and revenues going back to July 2011, when the city installed its current financial software system. Open Budget is a searchable database of budgeted expenses and revenues going back five years to July 1, 2009.

ControlPanel LA is best for looking for specific financial information — Open Budget is best for analyzing budgeting information and trends. Together, they provide an unprecedented interactive window into the details of the budget and finances of Los Angeles for citizens and researchers.

In addition to the new budget website, Garcetti’s performance metrics website – www.lamayor.org/performance — allows residents to monitor how effective city departments are in providing services. Garcetti also recently appointed the city’s first Chief Information Technology Officer Peter Marx http://www.lamayor.org/mayor_garcetti_appoints_peter_marx_as_chief_innovation_technology_officer, who helped launch this site.

Garcetti is using a new “Performance-Based” budgeting model this year. City budgets are usually created by taking the previous year’s budget and simply adding to it or reducing it. Performance based budgeting starts with identifying the desired results, and then spending decisions are made based on how to best achieve those results.

OpenGov offers web-based software for state and local government finances. The OpenGov Platform provides instant access to the budget and visualizes current and historic revenue and expenses. Government officials and citizens use the platform to understand, analyze, and share financial data. Learn more at: http://opengov.com.

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