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Open Budget Value Statement
- To enable community members in examining their city’s budget themselves
- Providing a user-friendly tool for accessing information about the budget
- Active community voters who want to understand where their money goes
- Local non-profits that may be seeking city funding through grants
The Overview Tool, Comparison Tool, Detail Tool, and Timeline Tool
The Overview Tool
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- To help users get a big-picture view of the revenue and expenses categories in a given year
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- This tool gives a novice budget enthusiast a non-intimidating starting place for learning about the budget process
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- Users who are new to reading city budgets can see broad revenue and expense categories
- They can also see how revenue is used to cover expense through the flow diagram
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- Allowing users to compare changes in revenue-expense flows in different years
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- Through the “Fiscal Year” tab
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- Anyone! Primarily though, people new to looking at budgets of any kind
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- Journalists looking to contextualize a budget-related editorial
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- Which expense categories does any particular revenue category “flow into”?
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- People looking to “follow the money” in more detail i.e. match item-by-item revenue to expense
The Comparison Tool
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- To allow users to make head-to-head budget comparisons
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- Tracking budget changes like growths or shrinks, changes in revenue sources between proposed and adopted budgets in a given year
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Through two drop-down tabs that lets users choose the year of a budget proposal and budget adoption they’re interested in comparing
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By providing the total percentage change between a pre-selected proposed budget and adopted budget
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Through a visual of the relative sizes of expense or revenue sources between a proposed and adopted budget for a pre-selected year using a bar graph
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- Allowing users to make comparisons between two proposed budgets (or two adopted budgets) between any given year
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- The drop-down tabs are flexible in allowing users to select any available year to compare either two proposed budgets, two adopted budgets, or one of each
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Journalists contextualizing an editorial on city budgets
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Activists raising awareness on certain budget cuts/budget changes
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Policy workers/aids using past years to inform future budget amendments
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- Budget enthusiasts looking for detailed budget comparisons across different years
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Brief descriptions of each expense or revenue source. For instance what does “recoveries” mean?
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- Novice budget enthusiast unfamiliar with budget-oriented vocabulary
The Detail Tool
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- To enable users to visualize the specific line items within the budget
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- People want to understand more than the broad categories of revenue and spending. They want to dig deep into the budget and actually see the line items of what’s being earned or spent
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- It creates a visualization tool that allows people to click on boxes that proportionally represent how much funding that line item receives
- Clicking on these boxes allows users to see specific expense or revenue sources within that line item of the budget
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It can be used by people who want to understand the different kinds of things each department does for the residents of Oakland
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It can also be used by people who want to understand what the different sources of revenue are and how they’re being generated
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It can be used by people who want to hold the City of Oakland accountable for the spending and revenue they budgeted for themselves
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By letting people click through each different department’s spending budget, people can explore what the different line items are within a department’s budget. They can then understand what is being funded and what each line item does for the City
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By clicking through each different revenue line, people can explore the different revenue generating activities for the City. They can see what taxes are in play, what fees are being collected, and how different revenue generating activities build the amount that can be spent for the City
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By making this data visual, people can easily see how different revenue and spending lines connect to one another. They can have a reasonable expectation of what the City will provide or they can call for change if they do not find what they’re looking for in the budget
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- Residents of Oakland who want to learn about the City’s revenue and spending
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- Educators who want to teach about how a city works
- Activists who want to publicize what is currently being earned and spent (in the hopes of changing things in the future)
- Journalists and researchers who are trying to better understand the City’s financial position.
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What the total revenue or total expense for each budget category is
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The broken down percentage of how much each itemized category contributes to the total revenue or expense of each budget category
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- This tool may not be for someone looking to get a quantitative summary within a specific budget category
The Timeline Tool
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- To orient the user towards different events in the budget process
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Identifying when certain budget-related events occur in the life-cycle of an adopted budget
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Identifying key participants in the budget decision making process (like the budget advisory committee, community input etc.)
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Informing people of what happens in each event of the budget process
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- The paired timeline graphic and text inform people which event in the budget process they’re observing and when it occurs within the life-cycle of an adopted budget
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- Identifying which events are partially synchronous or asynchronous with each other
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The timeline graphic is horizontally spaced out relative to the time an event takes
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The timeline graphic is also vertically spaced out to show overlapping events
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Journalists looking to contextualize an editorial on the budget adoption process
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Policy makers and City Council members wanting to orient themselves within a budget cycle
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- Activists, students, and educators wanting to find out the key events and participants in the budget adoption process
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- What the budget process looked like for a specific year
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- This product may not be useful for people wanting information specific to a past adopted budget