Sudbury Launches Extensive Fiscal Transparency Portal

From the Town of Sudbury:

The Town of Sudbury announced Thursday, July 14 that it has partnered with ClearGov, a leading municipal transparency and benchmarking platform, to launch a unique fiscal transparency portal. The new tool will enable taxpayers to clearly see how Sudbury is funded and how this funding is allocated to provide services to its residents.

“I am proud and excited to introduce ClearGov to Sudbury,” said Melissa Murphy­Rodrigues, town manager. “As part of my transition in this community, I have tried to bring better communication and increased understanding about municipal operations, and this is another important step to achieve that goal. I look forward to discussing this new platform with residents and using ClearGov to improve budgeting processes,” she said.

Sudbury has made this new portal available on the homepage of the town’s website. Visitors to the site can click on “Sudbury by the Numbers” on the right side of the homepage to get to Sudbury’s ClearGov page.

ClearGov sources publicly available financial and demographic municipal data to create easy-­to-­understand transparency platforms for municipalities across the U.S. ClearGov provides a snapshot of those communities to the public for free. Municipalities can choose to enhance that public platform with more robust and current information by subscribing and linking the expanded version directly to their own websites. In addition to the transparency portal, the subscribing communities also have access to an extensive, powerful suite of analytical and bench-marking tools.

“Massachusetts is known for progressive, participatory government and Sudbury is a perfect example of a community which takes pride in being transparent and accountable,” said Audrey Hall, ClearGov’s vice president of business development. “Transparent, accountable leadership drives citizen trust and engagement by providing user­-friendly, easy access to the inner workings of government.”

Further information is available through the city website.