Transparency Torn Paper Concept
BATAVIA, Ohio (Dec. 7,, 2015) — Clermont County is offering complete access to its financial data through a new citizen transparency tool that can be found on the county auditor’s website, www.clermontauditor.org/_dnn/Financial/Citizen-Transparency.
The citizen transparency tool, developed by Tyler Technologies, offers detailed information on revenue, expenditures and budgets, according to Chief Deputy Auditor Chuck Tilbury. “If I am a citizen, I can ask, ‘What are the courts spending?’ And then I can find that information by government function, in this case, judicial,” Tilbury said.
The Clermont County Board of Commissioners believes strongly in the principle of transparency, noted Commission President Ed Humphrey. “While our financial information has always been available to citizens, this transparency tool makes accessing that information much easier,” he said. “This is the right thing to do.”
“Citizens and taxpayers should be able to find this information without jumping through a lot of hoops,” said Commissioner Bob Proud. “This new tool puts that information at everyone’s fingertips.”
Added Commissioner David Uible, “We take our commitment to public information and public trust seriously. Openness and transparency are behind that.”
Tyler Technologies, which operates the county’s integrated financial and HR systems, developed the tool in response to the federal government’s 2009 Open Government Directive to promote transparency at all levels of government.
“Tyler Citizen Transparency is very user friendly and intuitive,” said Tilbury. “We’re all aiming for transparency and this makes it easy for citizens to get the information they are looking for. We get a lot of public record requests, which of course we will continue to respond to, but we’ll also direct people to run this tool to find the information themselves if they wish.”
This is the first of two transparency tools Clermont County is making available to citizens. Within a few weeks, the county’s financials will also be available on OhioCheckbook.com’s local government website, local.ohiocheckbook.com. OhioCheckbook.com is an open government tool initiated by Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel.
Both tools will be updated weekly, Tilbury said. The fee for the Tyler cloud-based service is $10,000 a year, he said. There will be no charge to Clermont County to upload its data on OhioCheckbook.com. #####
