HomeMy WebLinkAboutCommunity InnovationFY15 Community Innovation Challenge Grant
APPLICATION
Sign on behalf of the Applicants:
Applicants must submit documentation of demonstrated support for the proposed initiative
and grant application from each participating entity through the local support documentation
form at the end of the application. Please refer to the chart below to determine who should
sign your application.
Town with a Board of Selectmen
Board of Selectmen (The chair or Town Manager may
sign for the Board, provided that evidence shows that
the Board authorized the Town Manager or chair to sign
on behalf of the Board).
Town with a Town Council
Town Manager/Administrator
Cities
Mayor, unless charter designates some other local
office to be chief administrative or executive officer (i.e.
City Manager), M.�?.1, Ch, 4 Sec, 71,:
Regional school district
School Committee (The chair or supers nd nftnay,"
sign #or the committee, provided that eV�den a S,
that the committee authorized�he chairbr
superintendent to sign on behelf of the Comtiittee) ,
Regional planning agencies and councils of
Executive Director'
governments
Special municipal districts
Directors or equivalent
Counties
Commissioners
Signature
/ / > f //r'
Print Name
Signature
FY15 Application Deadline: October 10, 2014 Page 1 of 1
Enmity
/OZIWL t/i , L CLd
Title
Entity
Town of Mansfield
6 Park Isom, Mansjiekt, Alassathusetts 02048
Town Clerk
[lctariaune E. Staples, 0114C
October 10, 2014
Charter of the Town of Mansfield:
ARTICLE 4 TOWN MANAGER
Section 4 - 2 Powers and Duties
amended The Town Manager shall be the chief executive and administrative
1983 officer of the Town, and shall have full administrative authority over its
departments, and shall manage the Town's affairs in accordance with the policies
of the Board of Selectmen.
He shall be the purchasing agent for all activities and departments, and shall
purchase all materials and services and negotiate and execute all contracts for the
town.
A true copy attest:
Mariaiuie E. Staples, CMMC
Town Clerk of Mansfield
Phone (508)261-7345 Fax (508)261-1083 Email: vnstaples@tsimiefieldvrra.corri
MA P C SMART GROW1II AND KGIONAI. COLLABORATION
METROPOLITAN AREA PLANNING COUNCIL
The Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) is developing a Community
Innovation Challenge (CIC) grant, "Massachusetts Municipal Financial Data
Standards". We are requesting a letter of support for our proposed work,
developing an open data standard for municipal budgeting and finance. This
proposal is closely related to and in support of Arlington's CIC Visual Budget
proposal.
Your letter of support in no way obliges you to participate in this project, or to
adopt the data standard once it is developed.
What are open data standards?
Standards organize complexity. Fuel standards are the reason any car can be
fueled at any gas station. Technical standards allow text messages to travel
from a T-Mobile phone to a Boost Mobile phone.
Open data standards allow data from different sources to be combined and
compared. Furthermore, all applications that use an agreed -upon standard can
talk to each other without the burden of translating the data into a usable
format. This cuts down on development time and project complexity, but most
importantly confusion when comparing data.
Our use of "open standard" indicates that the standard will be publicly available,
and will be produced with an open, transparent process.
Why would a municipality want to be involved in contributing to a
data standard?
Open data standards reduce the work required to compare and combine data
from different sources. In the case of a mu,nicipal accounting data standard in
Massachusetts, such a standard will enable all 351 municipalities to understand
their budget and financial reporting in the context of their neighbors and the
entire Commonwealth.
Municipalities, such as Arlington, want to understand how efficient they are
compared to other nearby or similar municipalities. If one municipality
performs extraordinarily well in one sector, its neighbors and peers can look to
them as an example and learn new ways to deliver services effectively and
efficiently.
A data standard would reduce the severity of anomalies that appear when
comparing accounting data. If one municipality placed snow removal in the
DPW, and another one in Transportation, a data standard could present the data
in such a way that department becomes irrelevant, and "snow removal budget"
becomes clearly comparable across municipal borders.
Who are the stakeholders?
Municipal governments are the primary stakeholders. Other stakeholders
include:
- citizens, who want to know how their town compares to others.
- media, who want similar access to information.
- developers; who can use standard data to build insightful applications.
Prototype Municipal Open Data Standard
We will develop a prototype general municipal accounting open data standard,
which will present budget and financial reporting data in machine- and human -
readable formats, and which will reduce reporting discrepancies between
municipalities.
We will build off of existing financial accountability reporting standards. While a
municipal accounting data standard does not yet exist, reporting standards
from the GASB, the Collins Center at UMass Boston, and the UN will inform the
production of a data standard. We will also work closely with the Massachusetts
Department of Revenue to understand reporting requirements.
We will hold focus groups with our partner municipalities to develop a standard
that might serve as a regional or statewide standard. We will also hold focus
groups with business intelligence vendors, the Collins Center, Visual Budget,
Involution Studios, Open Checkbook, and local volunteer developers.
We recognize that this is only the beginning of a municipal financial data
standard. With six municipalities contributing, the standard may only take into
account the edge cases and exceptions of these six municipalities. We hope to
ensure broad, long-term interoperability by building a community and
governance structure around the standard, which can evolve over time as more
of the Commonwealth joins this work.
For more information please contact:
Holly St. Clair, AICP
Director of Data Services
Metropolitan Area Planning Council
60 Temple Place
Boston, MA 02111
617.933.0717
hstclair@mapc.org
www.mapc.org
Community Letterhead
DRAFT Letter of Support
[Date]
Tim Dodd, Program Manager
Executive Office for Administration and Finance
Massachusetts State House, Room 373
Boston, MA 02133
Dear Mr. Dodd:
I am writing to offer my support to the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) for their 2014
Community Innovation Challenge Grant Program proposal titled Massachusetts Municipal Financial
Data Standards.
Common municipal financial data standards would enable (0amernui :`;`:;;i,e to compare our
revenues and expenses to our peer communities. A common set of definitions and data formats
would allow us to more easily collaborate across city and town lines by streamlining the
information exchange. Benchmarking expenditures to our peers would not only help inform our
staff but also our citizens. It would also create opportunities to identify efficiency and opportunities
for cost savings.
A1rnur;pulicp nrcr) ic is also interested in engaging our residents in informed discussions about
municipal revenue and how it is spent in order to spur meaningful public debate. Transparency
helps bring a level of knowledge and trust to constituents. Transparency in government also helps
engage citizens and create a collaborative atmosphere. A common data standard would make it
easier for our municipality to collaborate with developers to implement civic data applications such
as visual budgets, open check book, and civic data portals, to help engage our citizens.
For the reasons above, we have no hesitation in supporting MAPC's CIC Grant Program Proposal for
a Massachusetts Municipal Financial Data Standards.
Sincerely,
[Name, Title, Community]
Purpose of the grant
The purpose of this project is to expand the use of Visual Budget as a planning and civic engagement
tool. The project has three objectives
Expand the use of Visual Budget to a total of 20 communities by December of 2015 and build a
community of practice amongst Visual Budget users. (We already have 6 of the 20 on board)
Add new features that will allow Visual Budget to provide a more complete picture of municipal
budgets: A specific view of debt and debt service, the ability to upload and move between multiple
budgets and the ability to easily generate multi -year forecasts
Make improvements to the tool that will make the user interface, data upload, and open source
implementation more scalable and easier to use.
Making improvements to the tool that will make it scalable as the number of communities implementing Visual
Budget grows. These improvements will make implementation and ongoing data submission easier for
municipalities and stabilize the open source code to make it simpler for users to install and developers to
extend. The new features will allow communities using Visual Budget to create multi -year budget forecasts by
applying growth parameters to budget categories. The ability create and share multiple budgets will allow
municipalities to display enterprise fund budgets in the Visual Budget interface as well publish multiple budget
scenarios for public consideration. Adding a specific view of debt and debt service will make capital budgets
and the capital planning process more transparent. The project will draw on the experience and expertise of
the participating communities to design and test these new features, ensuring that they will be useful to
communities with a variety of resources, budgetary pressures and financial constraints.
The participating communities have agreed to form the Visual Budget Consortium. They will work together
with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council to expand the group of municipalities using Visual Budget to at
least 20 and to foster a community of practice for municipalities that want to increase civic engagement and
transparency around budget priorities and financial planning.
Hoped for Benefits
Making the Visual Budget tool scalable and easier to implement will help to grow the number of communities
using the tool. As more communities implement the tool we hope to create a robust community of practice
amongst users of the tool.
The features we propose to add will make it possible to create budget forecasts and to run different scenarios
quickly. Those budgets and alternate scenarios can also be shared with the public when it's important to get
feedback on major budgetary decisions.
Cost of participation :
Participating in the grant will not require a further outlay of funds. It will require staff to devote some time to the
design/discovery process and testing of the new features.
Budget requested:
We will be requesting $95,000 with an assumed municipal match of $60,000 based on each of the 20
community investing $3000 in visual budget.
Project Timeline:
The project if funded would start with a discovery phase in January of 2015 and must be completed by
December 2015