Case Study: Comptroller of New York City achieves near-real-time M/WBE spending transparency with REI Systems

MWBE Report Card for New York City Comptroller

The Comptroller of New York City engaged REI Systems to build the "M/WBE Report Card NYC" website to increase transparency and promote equal opportunity by tracking City spending with Minority- and Women-owned Business Enterprises (M/WBEs). The Comptroller’s office needed a public-facing tool that could handle large, nearly real-time datasets (about 15,000 transactions per day and over 2 million transactions to date), integrate Drupal-based visualizations, and be delivered on an accelerated 10-week schedule.

REI Systems built custom Drupal modules, used Pentaho Kettle ETL and a Rackspace cloud host, implemented pre-aggregation and advanced dashboard functionality, and enabled mobile access to meet the requirements. The site launched in 10 weeks (Dec. 16, 2010) and now provides nearly real-time spending data for 100+ agencies, detailed views of more than 2 million transactions, sortable and drill-down visualizations, and filters by agency, industry, contract amount and demographic groups — delivering measurable improvements in public transparency and analysis.

Comptroller of New York City

Ari Hoffnung

Assistant Comptroller for Budget / Chief Policy Officer