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Socrata and New York City Ring In New Year With Open Checkbook Collaboration(ENP Newswire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) ENP Newswire - 02 January 2014 Release date- 31122013 - Seattle - Socrata (www.socrata.com), a Seattle-based cloud software company focused exclusively on democratizing access to government data, today announced a partnership with New York City to make it dramatically easier and more cost effective for cities, counties and states to transparently disseminate their spending data. Inspired by New York City's award-winning Checkbook NYC financial transparency application (www.checkbooknyc.com), Socrata will enhance its Open Checkbook application to incorporate Checkbook NYC's user interface look and feel and its functionality, offering the solution as an easy-to-implement, turnkey, software-as-a-service (SaaS). The new application will be offered as Socrata Open Spending, Inspired by Checkbook NYC. The new Socrata Open Spending, Inspired by Checkbook NYC application will be one of the featured applications available in Socrata's forthcoming Civic App Store, a marketplace of open data applications developed by Socrata, its government customers and third-party civic application developers. Checkbook NYC, initially launched in June of 2010 by the Office of New York City Comptroller John C. Liu, provides unprecedented access to track how the government of New York City spends its $70 billion annual budget. It is widely considered one of the best financial transparency applications in the country. In January of this year, a comprehensive national study, conducted by the United States Public Interest Research Group, titled 'Transparency in City Spending: Rating the Availability of Online Government Data in America's Largest Cities,' ranked New York City's Checkbook NYC transparency website in the top spot out of 30 cities. In November, Checkbook NYC was named 'Best External Application' by Government Technology magazine at the 2013 Best of New York City Awards. And, while New York City's finances have been available online since 2010, the Office of New York City Comptroller John C. Liu and Socrata are now teaming up to offer the capabilities of Checkbook NYC to municipal, city, county, regional and state governments around the world. 'Checkbook NYC is a transformational app that is truly democratizing citizen and journalist access to the finances of one of the world's greatest and most innovative cities,' says Socrata CEO and Founder Kevin Merritt. 'The goal of the new Socrata Open Spending, Inspired by Checkbook NYC application, is to offer what New York City created at scale, across Socrata's global cloud infrastructure, atop Socrata's open data platform and Socrata Open Data API.' 'We are excited to collaborate with Socrata, the leading data transparency company for governments, on standardizing the financial data formats and APIs used by as Socrata Open Spending, Inspired by Checkbook NYC. From day one, our dream with Checkbook NYC has been to inspire other governments to become more financially transparent so that taxpayers know how their hard-earned money is being spent and that researchers, policy experts, and entrepreneurs can access the information they need to improve people's lives,' says New York City Deputy Comptroller Ari Hoffnung. 'New York City's partnership with Socrata will help make this dream a reality.' New York City and Socrata are committed to supporting the open data developer community and its vital role in civic innovation, as well as the open data movement globally. All of the data made available through the Socrata Open Spending, Inspired by Checkbook NYC user interface will also be available via open, standards-based, machine-readable application programming interfaces (APIs) so that third-party developers can build applications that programmatically incorporate government financial data. Socrata and New York City will further collaborate on standard, open data formats for the financial data made available through the application. About Socrata Socrata is the cloud software company focused exclusively on democratizing access to government data. Its solutions help government leaders improve transparency, modernize citizen access to information and bring facts into every decision, with unprecedented speed and cost savings. Delivered as turnkey cloud services, Socrata's data consumerization products unlock data in enterprise silos and transform it into useful information that everyone can easily access, visualize, share and reuse. To learn more about Socrata, visit www.socrata.com or follow us on Twitter @socrata Contact Bill Glenn VP, Marketing Socrata (o) 206.453.1830 (m) 206.465.3228 [email protected] www.socrata.com [Editorial queries for this story should be sent to [email protected]] ((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected])) (c) 2014 Electronic News Publishing - |