There are many projects in the area of open budgets in the USA. This system truly works well, and all banks and other financial organizations like Payday Depot are involved in this process. Let’s see what are the details of this system and its benefits.
A typical presentation of information about the budget is given on the pages of relevant state structures in the form of documents for download in various formats. In addition to the revenue and expenditure parts of the budget, there, you can find information about officials’ salaries and bonds.
Budget transparency best practices are implemented in Washington, Idaho, Montana, New Hampshire, Maine, West Virginia, and Arkansas.
In the USA, there is an organization that deals with the problem of the participation of the legislative power in the budget process – State Budget Solutions. It maintains its own catalog of federal and regional projects in the open data.
All states have created portals for economic recovery by analogy with the federal projects in the area of openness and accountability transparent portals.
Platforms created to involve citizens in the budget process
A separate direction is different services and platforms created to involve citizens in the budget process. For example, with the help of a special form, the population of Chicago has the opportunity to send their thoughts about the budget to authorities.
The Thinking City project was created in Vancouver. With its help, the city budget, taxes, and fees were discussed. Another interesting Canadian project is Citizen Budget. This is a simulator for everyone interested in budgeting. Based on this solution, a budget simulator for Plateau Mont-Royal was created.
The solutions of the company Delib look interesting, the purpose of which is to help states rally people to make joint decisions with the help of dizzying applications. This company also offers a simulator and visualization application.
Portals and applications created by experts, non-governmental organizations, and activists for the analysis of budget data based on their secondary use
In 2012, the city of Palo Alto launched an open data platform. Two months later, based on these data, an open budget platform was launched with excellent visualization of the income and expenditure parts of the budget.
Another American city – Redwood City – shows a good example of a visual display of economic data. One more example is the ‘What is your dollar spent on’ project. The main budget documents are also collected there.
With the help of the Louisville Checkbook, you can familiarize yourself with the costs of customers and contractors. Information is available by year and category. You can see the salaries of officials, including by surname.
There are also primary data on the budget:
1. Stimulus & recovery tracking tools.
2. State checkbooks. Interactive and searchable datasets.
3. Open books with advanced information about the budget process.
4. Campaign finance & lobbying disclosure.
5. Budget allocation tools.
6. Consumer Protection Links.
With the unity of the USA tax system, each administrative unit chooses its tax structure, taking into account local conditions and the standard of living of the population.