Open Data for Budget Transparency in Guilford County
An Interview with the Office of Budget Management and Evaluation
In Guilford County, North Carolina, the Office of Budget Management and Evaluation (BME) wanted to leverage their Stae open data hub (launched last February) to support a more transparent budget process. Stae worked with BME staff to surface the county’s historical and current budget data on two new dashboards: one showing historical trends in Guilford County’s budget over the last ten years, and one showing the evolving state of the budget in the current fiscal year.
Stae sat down with BME Director Alex Smith and BME Analyst Daisy Mills to talk about these data: what they are, how they assist them in their jobs, and why Guilford County believes the public should have access. A lightly edited version of those conversations follows.
Stae: So, let’s jump right in and start with the Ten-Year Budget History. How does the historical data relate to your role in the Budget Office?
Daisy Mills: Any budget is a plan for the allocation of resources in the public sector. So, it’s important to have historical budget data, because we can look back and see what we’ve done in the past, what has worked well, and what has not worked well.
Alex Smith: The historical budget data helps us see bigger trends. We’re really looking at large trends here to try to work out some little minor ups and downs.
Stae: What do metrics like “permanent positions,” “positions per 1000 residents,” and “per resident expenses” measure? Why account for them in the budget?
AS: Things like county positions and per resident positions and expenses help us to normalize for the fact that we have a growing population. If our cost per resident stays roughly the same over time, that means primarily what’s driving the budget is population growth. Not every county has the same actual population, so both the per resident expenses and positions also give us some comparability across counties.
DM: It’s important to remember that the majority of these budget expenses that you’re looking at are actually salaries and wages for people that run the services that you receive. So, every position matters for us in achieving the goals of educating our community, creating a safe community, and creating a prosperous community. We feel like where you put your money, you’re going to put the results.
Stae: Absolutely. I would imagine that’s typical for all governments and most organizations that people are one of the biggest expenses.
Let’s move to the current budget data and dashboard. Can you talk a bit about the “seasonality” of this data?
AS: So broadly, a budget is a financial plan and a level of service plan for the next 12 months. But we get unknown expenses and adjustments that come up throughout the year. The budget goes up and down, usually because of grants and other additions.
The primary reason for the seasonality in the revenue, specifically, is due dates. For example, most of the revenue that you’re seeing, especially in the first few months, is taxes.
DM: Seasonality is a concept we talk a lot about in the budget. There are certain months where bills are due and, at the same time, we tend to track spending along with those bills.
Stae: And can you talk a little bit about the various categories that you use to break expenses and revenues down, things like “account,” “source,” “department,” and “service area?”
AS: At a low level, expenses and revenues both go into an account, which says, “this is what this revenue is from or this is what this revenue is for.” Revenue at a higher level is budgeted by what we call “source”, which includes, for example, property taxes or user charges. Expenses are budgeted by department. And then the service area is an even higher level grouping that we talk about more from a policy perspective, or what we call priorities for the board [of commissioners]. And those service areas encompass groupings of whole departments. We also break out revenues by department to show that certain departments pay for themselves.
Stae: Let’s turn to the question of why it’s important to have these data. And I want to start with the role that they play in your day-to-day duties. First, why look at the data historically? How does that help you do your job?
DM: There’s a saying that history often repeats itself, and the same is true for a budget. So, to some extent, it is important to have a way to look back and see where Guilford County has been to help us bounce back in the future from other events like COVID-19. Also, we look at prior information to make an educated guess about what we expect to receive and what we expect to spend. If we think that we should see a one percent increase in sales tax, we should have a reason as to why we think that. And finally, historical data helps with setting the budget. Departments go into the system that we use and they can see what they have spent and what they budgeted, and then they will actually input what they think they need for the next year.
Stae: And in terms of the current fiscal year, why is it important for you to break down the budget in these different ways mentioned earlier such as departments and service areas?
AS: So the way we approach the budget generally is to try to understand what the goal of the board is, and then work with departments to communicate how they are supporting or advancing the board goals. So, for example, the service areas give us some higher level summaries that allow us to better describe and better compare groups of services across counties without getting so in-depth that we lose the context. Breaking down the budget also helps us communicate the value that we are providing to the public as well as where the tax dollars are going.
DM: It’s always really great to see that the work that we’re doing is accomplishing results, because, at the end of the day, the budget is a driver for results. And so, to break the budget down by category, it really puts a face with the name. It shows what the people who are in those various departments are able to accomplish by having those financial resources. We can get a sense of how efficient we are with every dollar.
Stae: So, I want to touch on one last thing, perhaps the most important question, which is, why do you think it’s important to share these budget data with the public in an accessible way that can be downloaded and viewed in these interactive online dashboards?
DM: Just as it’s important for me as an employee to understand what we’re accomplishing as an organization, I think it’s even more important for people to know what their money buys them. We wouldn’t be here without our taxpayer support. So, to me, it’s a responsibility for us to show people what we’re doing with the money that they have entrusted us with.
AS: Generally, most people interact with local government, in their cities or their counties or both. On a daily basis, local governments collect trash, provide ambulance services, and provide libraries, among other things. And you explicitly pay local taxes. You actually have to write a check to the county for your county taxes. So, we want people to actually understand the value that they’re getting from the local government. And we want to emphasize that we are providing quality services, not just spending money.
DM: And, in the past, it’s been a lot of numbers on a page, but that’s not very friendly for the average person who isn’t used to looking at spreadsheets all day. A budget dashboard is a really easy way to look at these numbers and parse it down by department or by service area. Some residents may find that education is really their area of passion and they want to know what we’re doing in that area. And the budget dashboards provide a really easy way to look at something quickly and to be able to hunt around. And I think it’s a fun way to display information that otherwise may be hard to understand.
This interview was conducted with the help of Stae Civic Data Success Associate Marc Richardson.
Stae is a civic data platform that allows data analysts and non-technical program managers alike to connect data, store it in an easy-to-use warehouse, and create living reports, maps, and visualizations out of previously siloed or messy data. If you’re a public agency looking to streamline reporting, access more cross-functional insights, or integrate systems we’d love to hear from you.
Find us at we@stae.co or @staehere.
