Our story

ClearGov was founded in 2015 with the goal of making it easier for citizens to better understand how their tax dollars were put to work. By gathering and normalizing publicly available data from over 55,000 local and state governments, our site allowed anyone to see how their local government or school district was funded, where it spent this funding, how much debt it had incurred and, most importantly, how these figures compared to similar municipalities. Hundreds of government agencies upgraded their ClearGov profiles with additional data and used them as a financial transparency center to increase trust in their communities.

Since this humble beginning, ClearGov evolved into a broader financial management software provider. The company developed numerous software solutions that helped local governments move their budgeting processes from Excel spreadsheets to more modern, cloud-based, collaborative environments.  The company also built solutions to reinvent annual budget reports, which were typically PDFs hundreds of pages long, into dynamic, interactive websites.  These innovative solutions drove growth across nearly every state in the country.

While financial transparency was still important to our heritage, we had become a broader “budget cycle management” platform where transparency was the final of five phases of a budget cycle.

In 2022, the Company made a leap forward when it acquired the CityGrows licensing and permitting platform.  The solution allows any public agency to transform any paper or PDF form or process into a fully digital experience, complete with payment processing.  The need for this solution became acute when Covid shut down government offices and it was no longer possible to visit town hall to get a permit.  In fact, this experience has only driven the desire for local governments to modernize and digitize their processes across the board.

As such, ClearGov is now a company that helps all types public agencies (municipalities, counties, school districts, and special districts) operate more effectively and efficiently.  From capital planning to personnel budgeting; from dog licenses to building permits; from budget books to strategic plans, ClearGov is a platform for positive change.

We help local governments work better.  This is our mission.

Board of Directors