The city has partnered with Tyler Technologies to launch the citizen transparency portal, which allows residents to look through the city’s budget, payroll, revenue and expenses dating back to the 2013 fiscal year. The portal can be found at http://openbooks.tylertech.com/northmiami.
There are links to the city’s adopted budget. There’s a breakdown of payments to vendors, including everything from local businesses like Alaska Coffee Roasting to larger organizations like the Florida League of Cities. There’s also a listing of every check the city has cut dating back to Oct. 5, 2015. Each page also includes some kind of graph to illustrate the information.
The portal shows which fund pays for each expense and which fund any revenue goes to, but it does not give detailed explanations or line-by-line breakdowns on things like payroll.
Creating the portal will cost the city $18,500 annually. The technology comes from the same company that the city uses for its digital financial management.
As more residents use the portal, the city plans to explore adding additional features and options to the software.
“We’re in the first phase of rolling it out and as demand comes out we’ll determine what we want to add to it,” deputy city manager Arthur Sorey said.
The cities of Miami and Miami Beach have launched similar portals in recent years through a different platform called OpenGov.
©2016 Miami Herald Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
