Case Study: City of Davenport achieves automated, invoice-level financial transparency with Socrata's Open Expenditures

Davenport Calls Financial Transparency a Matter of Trust

The City of Davenport, Iowa, committed to earning public trust through transparent, easily consumable information but faced a challenge making rapidly changing financial data—payroll, accounts payable, and invoices—accessible and meaningful. Annual high-level reports required by law didn’t let citizens aggregate or drill into spending details, and city staff needed a solution that wouldn’t demand excessive manual upkeep.

Davenport integrated Socrata’s Open Expenditures (Open Checkbook) into its Davenport Today site in about three weeks, delivering an automated, backend-fed tool that lets users search by department, vendor, spending type and view transactions down to the invoice level, plus near-real-time budget and payroll figures. The result: reduced staff burden, more informed and focused public questions at council meetings, potential cuts in FOIA workload, and plans to expand published financial details.

City of Davenport

Brandon Wright

Finance Director, City of Davenport