ClearGov launches to help average citizens better understand their local goverment

While looking through my finances in early 2015 it struck me as to how much I was paying in property taxes every month.  At one point in my life this would have been more than I paid in rent on a monthly basis.  Yet I never really questioned where this money went or how it was spent.  So I began to wonder how this money was being put to work and decided to reach out to my local government.

Somewhat to my surprise my local government was extremely helpful in providing me with their most recent financial statements.  I began to dig into the data and found myself wondering, “Are these numbers good or bad?”  In other words, the fact that my town spend $51 million on the school system really didn’t mean much to me without context.  I wanted to know what the neighboring towns spent in comparison.  After adjusting for population sizes, I found that my town spent a significant amount more money per capita on education than these neighboring towns.

On one hand I was half-expecting to see this as my town is well-known for its school system.  On the other hand I was half-hoping the town would have spent less than similar towns and still have a top ranked educational system.  Nevertheless, this insight will help shape my views on local agendas and ballots.

I believe most people don’t really internalize how much they spend in taxes or the just accept the fact that they pay a lot of taxes and there is not much they can do about it.  But as technology evolves and the movement toward open data matures I also believe that the residents and voters will expect to be better informed and will be more engaged as a consequence.  Voters feel completely disconnected when they don’t understand (the numbers behind) the issues.

This sentiment is the seed that germinated into ClearGov as a platform to help citizens better understand their local governments.  It has further evolved into platform for governments to better communicate their story and engage their community.

We’re excited to launch ClearGov.com with coverage of every town and city in California, Massachusetts and New York as our foundation.  We’ll be adding many more states in the near future.

We truly welcome your feedback and suggestions on ways to better frame the data and provide proper context to the numbers.  We encourage you to join the conversation in the comments below or send us an email at support [at] cleargov.com.