Through the development of two new web apps, the City of Oakland, CA (pop. 413,775) has streamlined internal processes and made local government more transparent to residents.

RecordTrac, helped city staff respond to the thousands of requests for public records in an organized, transparent, and efficient manner, while keeping the public informed every step of the way. The platform also enables the public to search prior requests and track online the status of all requests from an initial inquiry through completion. Community members can also easily share digital copies of request documents.

The platform was built in collaboration with the Oakland Code for America Fellowship team and has facilitated more than 6,900 requests from the community since its launch in November 2013. Recordtrac has been called “Civic App of the Year” and “America’s Best Open FOIL Web Site” as well as the future of open public records. The outcome is an open source application that can be replicated through the code base available on Github. RecordTrac can count the number of days to respond, allow community members to provide feedback publicly and directly on the platform. The city is exploring ways to identify time and issue areas spent in order to better allocate resources in the future.

Open Disclosure allows residents to see how local government campaigns are financed.

App makes campaign finance data transparent

Oakland residents who want to know how local campaigns are financed can connect to an app created by the Open Disclosure team formed by a partnership between the Oakland Public Ethics Commission and OpenOakland. The app empowers citizens and strengthens democracy because it reveals influential connections, the flow of money in politics, and potential issues with how campaign funds are raised or spent.

Open Disclosure’s goal is to introduce a high standard of clarity and transparency to the disclosure of Oakland’s local campaign finance.

The open source application can be replicated through the code base available on Github. Citizen feedback is received through the Github repository for this application with ongoing iterations being developed and implemented based on community feedback. Other communities are considering adopting the app.

The initiatives were developed by teams under the leadership of then Interim City Manager Henry Gardner and will continue under the direction of incoming City Manager Sabrina Landreth.