Wake Forest partners with ClearGov to introduce new Open Data Portal to bring clarity to Town finances & performance

Thursday, January 4, 2024 - 3:00pm

The Town of Wake Forest has partnered with ClearGov, a leading municipal transparency and benchmarking platform, to launch an infographic-based Open Data Portal.

Accessible from the “Government” drop-down menu on the Town website and under “Common Resources” on the website homepage, this new tool offers residents an easy-to-understand, visual breakdown of Wake Forest’s finances, as well as insights into the Town’s demographics.

The site also provides performance data from several Town departments, including Fire, Police, Planning, Inspections, Parks, Recreation & Cultural Resources, Downtown Development, Public Works, and Downtown Development. Town staff will continue to gather information for release to the Open Data portal as an ongoing process to make data more easily accessible and encourage residents to become more familiar with how their government is performing.

Wake Forest is part of a growing number of North Carolina municipalities that are taking transparency to a new level on the ClearGov platform, which also showcases basic profiles of every municipality in the state. The Town has included monthly financial summaries which highlight budget versus actual and year-to-date performance for each of the operating funds.

“We are pleased and excited to offer this platform as a means of achieving greater transparency,” said Budget & Performance Analyst Ben Blevins. This has been a goal of ours for some time, so it is rewarding to see it become a reality for our community.”

ClearGov sources publicly available financial data on municipalities to create easy-to-understand transparency websites for all municipalities across the United States, which are made available to the public for free. 

“This is an exciting development for Wake Forest and our residents,” said Assistant Town Manager/CFO Aileen Staples. “Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for residents to understand how the Town is spending taxpayers’ money and performing overall. We’re excited to provide them with a state-of-the art tool that has been customized for Wake Forest.”

For more information, email Ben Blevins at [email protected].