Conversation in Civic Innovation: Financial transparency and citizen engagement

Many municipalities are feeling the pressure to be more transparent about finances.  They are looking for tools to make dense financial information accessible to citizens.   Local governments see these tools as a way to build trust with citizens by showing that they use tax dollars efficiently and effectively.

Residents often engage with their local government around financial issues only when an issue comes up that feels like a crisis to them.  Suddenly, decisions they care about deeply are being made and the arguments for and against the choices involve understanding budgets and the budget process.  Often all the information they need is available but hard to find and hard to digest. 

What do municipal governments need to do to go from providing financials tools that build trust to providing tools that helps citizens engage in a meaningful and practical way with issues that concern them but have financial implications that constrain the options?  What would a set of tools that covered the whole financial waterfront - budgets, actuals, future projections, benchmarking, participatory budgeting - look like? 

Panelists will include:

• James Milan, producer of Your Arlington Dollar on ACMi (Arlington Community Media Inc.)

• Mike Herbert, Ashland Town Manager

• Adam Langley, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Fiscally Standardized Cities database

• Christopher Dwelley, Co-Lead & Performance Manager, Citywide Analytics Team at City of Boston

• Curt Savoie, Principal Data Scientist at Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Schedule:

5:30 – 6 PM – Registration and networking

6:00 – 7:00 – Panel Discussion

7:00 - 7:30 – Q&A

7:30 – 8:30 – Post event networking