Case Study: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) achieves rapid, transparent CARES Act fund tracking with Tyler Technologies' Socrata solution

Iowa leverages Socrata app to measure CARES Act spend

Iowa, a data‑first state government, faced the urgent challenge of quickly deploying and transparently reporting more than $4.26 billion in CARES Act funding. With a tight timeline and no standardized federal‑grant reporting in their accounting system, officials needed a simple, public‑facing way to show allocations, expenditures, and vendor payments while ensuring consistent, auditable data across multiple state agencies.

Leveraging Tyler’s Socrata platform, Iowa launched a Pandemic Recovery Report within three weeks—combining standardized datasets, ETL processes, and SoQL queries into interactive Finance and Payment Explorer dashboards. The centralized solution unified agency reporting, made underlying data publicly accessible, eased reconciliation, and reduced maintenance to about 30 minutes a week, enabling clear disclosure (e.g., $4.26B awarded, $2.81B expended) and streamlined reporting to the U.S. Treasury with positive stakeholder feedback.

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Scott Vander Hart

State Data Administrator