Case Study: Checkbook NYC achieves award-winning fiscal transparency with REI Systems

Providing NYC Citizens Transparency Into the City’s Budget, Revenue, and Spending

Checkbook NYC, the New York City Comptroller’s online financial transparency tool, faced the challenge of making vast, agency-level spending data understandable and engaging for citizens—moving beyond large tabular datasets to interactive, easy-to-use views. The Comptroller selected REI Systems to develop the next version of Checkbook NYC, delivering a web application with open-source datasets, customizable visualizations, and an intuitive dashboard.

REI Systems implemented an Agile-built solution that ingests multiple systems’ data, powers customizable graphs and user-friendly tables, provides constant updates via multiple segment servers for 24x7 availability, and publishes downloadable data and open-source code. The REI Systems-built Checkbook NYC helped New York earn the #1 ranking in a 2013 U.S. PIRG study, won Government Technology’s 2013 Best External Application award, and was a 2015 Excellence.gov finalist—substantially improving public access to and reuse of city spending data.

Checkbook NYC

Scott M. Stringer

Checkbook NYC