Definitely think this is a step in the right direction.<p>Unfortunately, it looks like this solution does not address the balance sheet side of the equation, which is where most towns are in dire straights (even if they don't admit it as they have more latitude in not recognizing the future costs of say pensions than corporations do). Until people have true transparency into this area, it will be hard to make good decisions as an electorate.<p>Again, think its a great step forward...on a very long road
Pretty sad to see HN become a parody of itself on a near constant basis: half of the comments attacked the article as "link bait" without even addressing the actual content. I've been watching OpenGov closely for the last year and have been impressed (and jealous that I didn't start this myself having worked in big gov IT shops my whole career and half jokingly playing around with the idea of a SAAS offering for publishing budget data online; something that seemed a difficult enough problem that I though it was magic when I was able to see it firsthand with OpenGov's software)
As somebody who is interested in improving my awareness of local politics, I think this is really great. Not only have these guys created a beautiful interface for viewing budget allocations, they have actually convinced governments to use it. I look forward to the day this comes to San Francisco. Even those with no interest in politics will be better off for it, as greater transparency will surely improve the way our money is being spent.<p>As usual, most HN comments are negative. I've met Balaji, and he can talk some good hype when he wants to, but I think it's hardly disingenuous or linkbaity to emphasize that OpenGov already has customers with $50 billion in revenues/spending. It could potentially be used by any city, state, or national government, or really any large organization spending public dollars. That's an enormous potential market.
If you want to learn more about the Civic Tech/Gov Tech space, checkout the Code for America Summit live stream when it continues tomorrow at <a href="http://www.codeforamerica.org/summit/" rel="nofollow">http://www.codeforamerica.org/summit/</a><p>(Shameless plug: I will be presenting about our start-up tomorrow)<p>It's not just A16Z who's getting into this space. Check out the new fund by Ron Bouganim.<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/09/15/a-23-million-venture-fund-for-the-government-tech-set/" rel="nofollow">http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/09/15...</a><p>And obviously, Y-Combinator is now getting into the government space. <a href="https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/</a><p>It's been a slow build, but the industry is huge.
The title is nonsensical. The company's clients have 50 billion in revenue so that makes opengov a 50 billion dollar company? By that logic the food caterer to Apple is a 100 (?) billion dollar company.<p>Prior to reading the article I thought the main purpose of opengov was to help local governments facilitate open access to their data. When I have come across a government that uses opengov it is in reality more of a gate keeper. Adding another level of control to government data rather than letting citizens have direct access to the raw data.<p>The change in focus to internal use by governments could indicate a lack of money being spent for the original purpose.
This is pretty much clickbait.<p>For those who want the gist of what this article/startup really is, it's a centralized platform for managing budgets in a transparent way used by governments internally (to create reports, manage expenses, etc). It makes it more efficient for different departments to collectively manage and access budgets. Apparently it gets $50B of government spending flowing through it's systems. This internal usage is then presented to citizens in a Mint.com like format in the name of transparency (like here: <a href="https://losangeles.opengov.com/" rel="nofollow">https://losangeles.opengov.com/</a>)<p>Pretty cool and I wish them well, but it is nowhere near what the title implies.
I am amused that to cut through the noise the author - a former Developmental Biology graduate student, who went on to found a successful bio-tech startup, who presently lectures at Stanford and is a partner in one of the premier VC's in the valley - is foced to use linkbait to drive eyeballs to his article just like the rest of us hustlers.<p>(1) <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/balajissrinivasan" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/balajissrinivasan</a>