Open FI$Cal, the transparency website that publishes state government expenditures, will soon add data from eight more departments that have transacted in the FI$Cal system for at least a year.
The eight are slated to release their data during the first week of March.
Next up, FI$Cal is reaching out to 2018 Release departments to help them prepare their data for entry into the portal. Departments are given access to a business intelligence tool that contains exactly the same data that will be loaded onto Open FI$Cal. FI$Cal also has created a recommended process for departments to complete the data review, and staff will be given written documentation and invited to an online training to prepare them for the review process.
Departments coming online in the summer will get a choice of which year’s data to initially load – the current 2018-19 fiscal year or the next fiscal year, which begins July 1. Data goes into the site two months in arrears, so by October data from all departments transacting in FI$Cal is scheduled to appear on the transparency site.
The public can filter departments’ expenditures in different ways and at varying levels of detail. Once all of the departments are on board in Open FI$Cal, California will have taken a big step closer to national standards for government transparency.