The accessibility, transparency, and format (i.e. how easy the source data is for citizens to use) of budget information can vary considerably between government entities. I’ve attempted to create a clear rubric for scoring the quality of available budget information to both give people an idea of how easy or difficult it may be for them to use these data, as well as to be able to point out easy changes that local government entities could make to improve the quality of the budget information they make publicly available.
Each publicly available budget is scored from 0 to 2 on its Accessibility, Transparency, and Format. The minimum possible score is 0, indicating the lowest quality budget information. The maximum possible score is 6, indicating the highest quality budget information.
| Score | Description |
|---|---|
| 0 | Not Available online |
| 1 | Available online |
| 2 | Easily found via search engines |
| Score | Description |
|---|---|
| 0 | Documents only overall revenue and expenses |
| 1 | Includes budgetary detail at the function/department level |
| 2 | Includes budgetary detail within functions/departments |
| Score | Description |
|---|---|
| 0 | Available as image-only PDFs (can’t search text) or as webpage objects |
| 1 | Available as text searchable PDFs (OCR or True PDF) |
| 2 | Available as tabular data (json, .csv, .xlsx, etc.) |
Budget Information Quality Scores and direct sources (e.g. links to pdf downloads or websites containing budget information) are presented for each major governmental entity in Kendall county.