ClearGov Announces Enhanced Town Financial Benchmarking

ClearGov was developed to help the average citizen better understand how their tax dollars are being put to use.  A major element to this mission involves benchmarking town’s finances.  In other words, how do you know whether $35 million spent on your town’s education system is a proper figure without a point of reference.  Benchmarking this figure against other towns provides that meaningful baseline for comparison.

Today ClearGov has launched enhanced town financial benchmarking technology to better identify towns for more accurate comparisons.  ClearGov’s new comparison modeling takes into account two key factors:  proximity of towns and population size.

When benchmarking Town X’s finances ClearGov’s smart algorithm first looks for other towns with a population within 50% deviation (up or down) of Town X’s.  In other words, if Town X has a population of 10,000, ClearGov will identify towns within the same state with populations between 5,000 and 15,000.

Next the ClearGov limits this pool of towns to within a 20 mile radius of Town X.  If this combination of population and proximity filters do not produce a minimum of five towns to benchmark against, the smart algorithm gradually increases the radius and population deviation to “widen the net.”  This is especially critical for small towns in rural areas, as well as large cities.

Our goal is to continue to refine this algorithm to ensure that our town comparisons properly identify true peer towns.  Stay tuned for continued enhancements in the near future!  In the meantime, please let us know if you have any questions, feedback or suggestions in the comments below.