LIU ON WESTCHESTER SQUARE SHELTER SUIT:
“We
are gratified that the State Supreme Court, Bronx County ruled in favor
of the Comptroller’s office in our suit challenging
the Mayor’s practice of establishing shelters and paying for those
services without going through required public procurement processes.
The practice of cutting backroom deals with shelter operators cannot and
should not be tolerated. The administration should
have put more effort into planning for housing for the homeless.”
“Special thanks go to outside counsel Gibson Dunn, which worked on the case pro bono for the good of New Yorkers.”
Background:
A court has sided with the Comptroller’s office in a suit questioning the legality of the City’s providing homeless shelter
at Westchester Square in The Bronx via a “per diem” agreement instead of Procurement Policy Board Rules.
State
Supreme Court Judge Geoffrey D. Wright wrote: “I find the attempts at
hair splitting by the Respondents to be unpersuasive.
To accept their arguments would be to vitiate, if not annul the City
Charter. The motion for a declaration that the procedure followed in
this instance is contrary to statute is granted. … In sum, then, the
Dept. Of Homeless Services circumvented established
rules for the funding of its activities without an acceptable excuse. I
therefore declare that the practice of entering into housing/service
agreements for clientele is contrary to law, and not excused by
allegedly exigent circumstances.”
LIU OPEN-SOURCES CHECKBOOK NYC:
$1 Million in Commitments from Oracle, CGI, & REI Systems Will Facilitate Rapid Adoption of NYC’s Groundbreaking Financial Transparency Website
City Comptroller John C. Liu today published the source
code for the Checkbook NYC financial transparency website, and announced
several partnerships that will enable other governments to rapidly
leverage New York City’s investment in order to create similar websites
of their own.
Checkbook
NYC empowers the public to keep an eye on more than $70 billion in
annual government spending with detailed, up-to-date information
about New York City’s revenues, expenditures, contracts, payroll, and
budget. In January, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group named it the
best website of its kind.
“In
an era of scarce resources, open source software represents a major
cost savings opportunity for taxpayers because it allows government
to mobilize the collective talents of developers everywhere,” said Comptroller Liu.
“Sharing the Checkbook NYC code with other governments is not a
selfless act; on the contrary, it’s a win-win strategy that will enhance
the quality of our software
at no additional cost to taxpayers.”
The code, which is available for use and modification under the AGPL 3.0 license, can be accessed at GitHub (https://github.com/NYCComptroller/Checkbook),
an online community where open source code is stored and shared.
Comptroller Liu encouraged programmers and governments that adopt the
system to contribute improvements and features that can be incorporated
into future versions of the source code.
Comptroller
Liu made the announcement at the 10th annual Personal Democracy Forum,
which explores the evolving relationship between technology
and democracy. He thanked two technology giants, Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL)
and CGI (NYSE: GIB), for agreeing to develop “adapters,” in the form of
automated data feeds, between their financial management systems and
Checkbook NYC. These feeds will enable other
state and local governments that use Oracle and CGI solutions to easily
share their financial data with the public.
“Oracle
is proud to support the City of New York in providing transparency into
city spending via the Checkbook NYC application,” said
Peter Doolan, Group Vice President & Chief Technologist of Oracle Public Sector.
“We believe that open and transparent insight into government spending
strengthens the democratic process and provides a framework for fiscal
responsibility and accountability.”
“CGI
is proud of its partnership with the City of New York, and has long
been a believer in the benefit of using IT to improve the efficiency,
openness, and accessibility of government information to the public,”
said Michael Keating, CGI Senior Vice President and New York Client Executive. “We support the vision of Checkbook NYC and look forward to helping interested governments expand its
adoption.”
Comptroller
Liu also commended REI Systems, the technology firm that collaborated
with the City on the development and open-sourcing of Checkbook
NYC, for volunteering to provide Oracle and CGI with the technical
expertise and tools to test their new “adapters” and to host “sandbox”
development sites for a select number of their state and city financial
management system clients.
“We
couldn’t be more proud of our association with the Office of the
Comptroller of the City of New York and the launch of Checkbook NYC,”
said Scott Fletcher, REI Systems Chief Operating Officer.
“Checkbook NYC has set a new bar for financial transparency, and the
City of New York is taking it to an entirely new level by leveraging
this investment for the benefit of other state and local
governments across the U.S. What a great opportunity to demonstrate the
power of creative and innovative public-private partnerships to improve
government operations and transparency.”
Collectively,
Oracle, CGI, and REI Systems are estimated to have committed to
investing more than $1 million of resources in order to make
Checkbook NYC rapidly adaptable by other governments.
The Comptroller credited Deputy Comptroller Ari Hoffnung and Assistant Comptroller Michael Bott for their leadership roles
on this open-source project and for taking steps to ensure that Checkbook NYC improves over time.
“Governments serious about reducing costs and inefficiencies must make collaboration a top priority,” said
Deputy Comptroller Ari Hoffnung. “We also need to work more
closely with our technology vendors to ensure that the tools we purchase
are developed in a way that enables government to easily share data
with the public and become more financially transparent.”
The
Comptroller also thanked several City agencies for their assistance on
this project, including the Mayor’s Office of Contract
Services, the New York City Council, the City’s Financial Information
Services Agency, and the Office of Management and Budget.
“There’s
endless potential for excellence in government when it leverages the
knowledge of the people and communities it serves,”
said New York City Chief Information and Innovation Officer Rahul N. Merchant.
“Publishing the source code for Checkbook NYC is an important
contribution to the Bloomberg Administration’s ongoing open government
efforts.”
A
“Checkbook NYC Hackathon,” designed to bring together civic activists,
software developers, and entrepreneurs, is being planned
for the fall. Discussions are also under way with other governments to
form a consortium that would collaboratively manage the Checkbook NYC
source code and share costs associated with future enhancements.
“I applaud the City Comptroller’s office for promoting transparency through Checkbook NYC and making important data available
to the public,” said New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli.
“In 2008, our Open Book New York site gave the public access to state
spending in real time. Since then we’ve had more than 2.7 million visits
with people searching for contracts, local-government,
and state-agency spending, and plan to add more spending data to the
site. We invite others to join with us and the City Comptroller to share
public data more easily and quickly.”
“With Checkbook NYC, the New York City Comptroller is proving unequivocally that technology can indeed make government more
efficient, transparent, and accountable,” said Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum and Chairman of NY Tech Meetup. “The open way Checkbook NYC has been strategically designed and deployed further confirms that New York City is ready to
move from the era of simple 20th-century E-Government to the reality and benefits of 21st-century We-Government.”
“This is a smart move that will benefit other cities and states seeking to adapt the unrivaled features of Checkbook NYC,”
said Phineas Baxandall, a Senior Analyst at U.S. PIRG and
national expert on government transparency. “It’s doubly smart because
New York City will reap rewards every time other places build
improvements and new functions for this platform. It’s
a win-win.”
“Opening
up the Checkbook NYC source code to the public is a fantastic step
toward increasing transparency in government spending,”
said Council Member Gale A. Brewer, an author of the City’s groundbreaking Open Data law.
“I have been an advocate of Checkbook NYC and government transparency
for many years. By opening this code to programmers, we will enable
other municipalities
to build their own open sites. Checkbook NYC lets citizens track
spending and makes government work smarter here and across the country.”
“CheckbookNYC.com
is an outstanding example of local government adoption of the open
source software model, and with this project
NYC has truly stepped up and into the open IT ecosystem,” said Deborah Bryant, Open Source for America co-chair and Director, Open Source Initiative.
“NYCs highly evolved approach also increases the benefit of
collaboration beyond software code – such
as sharing related investments like training, knowledge base, and
business rules – exponentially increasing its value to the City and
anyone else joining the project.”
“Comptroller Liu continues to enhance transparency of the City’s finances with the latest advancement of Checkbook NYC, the
online tool that provides virtual real-time updates of the City’s spending from payroll to contracts,” said
Dick Dadey, Executive Director of Citizens Union. “By making
publicly available the open source code for Checkbook NYC, Comptroller
Liu is ensuring that other cities and states across the country can make
known their expenditures in an accessible format
to the public. This will help establish New York City as a leader in
financial transparency.”
“Congratulations to the team who has delivered CheckbookNYC.com,” said
Jennifer Foutty, Executive Director, Kuali Foundation. “It is a
significant milestone that demonstrates how local government is finding
ways to collaborate and use open source technology to provide effective
services and drive down costs. The Kuali
Foundation, which produces open source software for higher education
through leveraged investment by member institutions, is pleased to see
like-minded efforts in local government.”
“Checkbook NYC is a great example of how open data can dramatically improve visibility for citizens and taxpayers into the
operations of their government,” said Mark Headd, Chief Data Officer for the City of Philadelphia.
“The move to open source the code for this application is a huge
victory for government transparency and a boon for other cities that are
working to open
up spending and budget data.”
“Checkbook NYC has already set a new gold standard for financial data transparency by a major city,” said
Andrew Hoppin, 2010 New York State Public Sector Chief Information Officer of the Year and CEO, New Amsterdam Ideas. “Even more laudable is the Comptroller's ambitious plan to release Checkbook NYC as an open-source software project that other
cities can benefit from and contribute back to.”
“We’re impressed,” said
John Kaehny, Co-Chair of the NYC Transparency Working Group and Executive Director of Reinvent Albany.
“Comptroller Liu’s Checkbook NYC team has built a powerful transparency
tool for New York City and created an open source process and
partnerships
that ensure it will keep evolving and improving. This is smart,
effective 21st century government, and a new model for New York City
technology tools.”
“By making the code for Checkbook NYC open source, New York City Comptroller John Liu is providing cities and towns across
the country with a free tool to promote budget transparency,” said Ronnie Lowenstein, director of the New York City Independent Budget Office.
“Governments around the globe will benefit enormously from this contribution to the open data ecosystem,” said
Kevin Merritt, Socrata's Founder and CEO. “Socrata will support
the Checkbook NYC app by offering it as a turnkey cloud service, and
enhancing it with open APIs for developers, and online data analysis and
visualization tools for citizens.”
“Opening data and granting better access to public information will only get easier as governments and communities learn from
each other’s successes and challenges,” said Ellen Miller, Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Sunlight Foundation.
“By making Checkbook NYC open source, New York City is providing a
valuable resource to other towns, cities, and states looking
to attain greater financial transparency.”
“We applaud New York City and Oracle for the work they are doing to promote financial transparency,” said
Montgomery County, Maryland, Controller Lenny R. Moore.
“Montgomery County is a leader in open data and is always working to
make government spending more accessible and easier to understand for
our taxpayers. We are intrigued by the possibility of deploying
an open Checkbook.”
“Cities need to share their resources, and innovations in any city should benefit every city,” said
Abhi Nemani, Chief of Staff, Code for America. “Checkbook NYC is a
flagship example of the emerging ecosystem of interoperable, useful,
and reusable civic tools. This is the kind of project Code for America
hopes to support in city after city.”
“New
York has provided a very easy-to-use transparency portal to gain access
to budget, payroll and departmental expenditures,
to the point that not only will the citizens of New York benefit, but
internal departments will benefit by having easy access to their own
information for better management and accountability,” said
Steve Reneker, General Manager and Chief Technology Officer, City of Los Angeles Information Technology Agency. “The City of Los Angeles will be looking into leveraging this open source solution to provide similar benefits.”
“Checkbook NYC provides New Yorkers with both the data on how City funds are spent and the tools to take a close look,” said
Gene Russianoff, Senior Attorney for the New York Public Interest Research Group. “And now, cities across the nation will be able to do the same, thanks to the New York City Comptroller.”
“Checkbook NYC is by far the most sophisticated city-budget transparency app to date," said
Adam Stiles, co-creator of Open Budget Oakland. “By making
Checkbook available to cities nationwide, NYC is enabling a common
framework to understand city spending that could one day allow, for
example, apples-to-apples comparisons of spending across
cities.”
Background
Press release: Launch of Checkbook NYC 2.0 (January 23, 2013)
http://www.comptroller.nyc.gov/press/2013_releases/pr13-01-014.shtm
Video: Launch of Checkbook NYC 2.0 (January 23, 2013)
About Oracle:
With
more than 390,000 customers—including 100 of the Fortune 100—and with
deployments across a wide variety of industries in
more than 145 countries around the globe, Oracle offers an optimized
and fully integrated stack of business hardware and software systems.
About CGI:
Founded
in 1976, CGI Group Inc. is the fifth largest independent information
technology and business process services firm
in the world. Approximately 69,000 professionals serve thousands of
global clients from offices and delivery centers across the Americas,
Europe and Asia Pacific, leveraging a comprehensive portfolio of
services including high-end business and IT consulting,
systems integration, application development and maintenance,
infrastructure management as well as a wide range of proprietary
solutions. As a full-service systems integrator and managed services
provider, CGI has the industry know-how, tools and technologies
to address business challenges across the public sector spectrum. CGI
provides state and local governments with creative IT solutions that
drive efficiencies, effectiveness and cost containment—all while
achieving short term needs and maintaining governments’
long-term vision. With annualized revenue in excess of C$10 billion and
an order backlog exceeding C$18 billion, CGI shares are listed on the
TSX (GIB.A) and the NYSE (GIB). Website:
www.cgi.com.
About REI Systems:
REI
Systems, serving Government for over 20 years, is the employee-owned
software engineering company that supported the development
and implementation of Checkbook NYC, in collaboration with the
Comptroller’s Office. REI Systems is an established leader in open
government, open data, and transparency solutions, having created a
number of engaging and innovative government websites, including
DATA.gov, USAspending.gov, ITDashboard.gov, and Performance.gov. Please
visit REI at
www.reisystems.com and follow us on
Twitter.
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