Budget reports are notoriously long and uninteresting—full of financial jargon, indecipherable tables and lengthy footnotes. In fact, Lowell’s annual 2018 budget report was 614 pages long. Easton published one that was 213 pages. And Taunton’s yearly budget was on the shorter side still at 127 pages.
But thanks to ClearGov, residents won't have to bury themselves in cumbersome documents to learn about their towns' finances anymore.
The Maynard-based transparency and budgeting software startup pares down the information in dense records into easily digestible infographics. People can look to these graphics to understand communities' spending practices more easily.
“We are a modern alternative to this legacy document—the annual report or budget book—that is just not consumer-friendly,” said CEO Chris Bullock in a phone interview. “People can dig into any department and see where the money's coming from and where it's going.”
The startup posts the graphics on virtual profile pages it creates for individual cities and school districts on its website. Each page explains numbers that are relevant to residents—revenue, debt and demographics—in a simplistic way. By expediting the way people become familiar with public finances, ClearGov “democratizes the governing process more and more,” said Bullock.
The infographics also compare cities’ spending to other towns of similar size, population and income level. This way, residents can decide how concerning the statistics put forth are. For example, having $10 million in debt is standard for some cities, but catastrophic for others.
Bryan Burdick, the president of ClearGov, said putting this information online with context lets city governments take control of the narrative around their spending.
“We really live in a world where people expect this budget information to be out there. And if it's not out there, they begin to question why, especially in the political environment that we live in where trust in government is at an all-time low,” said Burdick. “It's incumbent upon local governments and school districts to tell their story before someone else does.”
Since launching in 2015, ClearGov has built the world’s largest municipal financial database. Using public financial records from states’ Departments of Revenue, the team behind the startup has put together over 40,000 transparency profiles.
Sharing state-provided budget information is actually how ClearGov got started. Following a career in legal data sharing, Bullock began creating these public profile pages for civic agencies. When a few Massachusetts towns asked Bullock to update its page with their official data, he obliged.
"Really, the product and the company was formed off after a few initial conversations with Massachusetts town managers," admitted Bullock.
And thus, ClearGov’s core function was born.
When a town or district partners with ClearGov, it claims its preexisting profile, which often includes out-of-date state information. The town then shares its updated information with the ClearGov team, who adds it to the page in two weeks' time. Afterward, the startup filters cities' new financial information onto the page as it comes through.
But ClearGov functions as more than a budget-simplifying tool.
Using artificial intelligence, the company’s software constructs finance forecasts for towns. If a city gives ClearGov ten years of historical data, the software responds with eight yearly budget forecasts—two less than the number of cycles provided, said Burdick.
Districts and governments can also manually gather information on specific initiatives on the page itself. Here, updates and press releases on construction efforts, building developments or hiring process can be consolidated on a single link.
Most notably, the startup created a tool to convert local governments' accounts to a cloud-based system. Right now, many smaller towns document their spending on spreadsheets, explained Burdick. So their systems are prone to inefficiency, clerical errors and mathematical mistakes.
"Being on the cloud helps automate some of the workflow processes and adds new tools like audit trails, so they can see who changed what in the accounts," Bullock noted.
In May, ClearGov partnered with the media sites Ballotpedia, Patch and GateHouse Media. The news and information sites now host ClearGov's infographic-based performance data alongside a “powered by ClearGov” label. For example, stories on the Framingham Patch that require debt statistics include an attachment to the Framingham ClearGov page at the bottom.
The past four years have brought enormous growth to the startup. ClearGov has expanded from a one-man operation into a fully-fledged business, armed with 27 employees who largely work in sales and product development. Today, towns in 29 states and counting use ClearGov to streamline their bureaucratic processes, including one in three Massachusetts towns.
But to Bullock, the function of his company remains the same as it was on day one.
"We just gather all the publicly available information and breathe life into it," Bullock said smilingly. "That's all."
ClearGov is one of BostInno’s 50 on Fire 2019. Meet ClearGov and the rest of the Winners November 7 at our Annual 50 on Fire event at Artist for Humanity. Grab your tickets here.
