New software makes budget viewing easier for residents

BIRMINGHAM — Residents curious about how the city plans to spend its money next year can now view that information as an online flipbook, thanks to new software.

The city of Birmingham’s new OpenGov budget software is allowing them to make viewing the budget more transparent and efficient for residents and city staff. This cost the city $79,000 for the first year, which includes $34,000 for the software, and approximately $45,000 for implementation and training, which took approximately six months to complete. The annual software and support will be approximately $34,000, plus inflationary increases, going forward.

Officials said the online budget book will give residents the ability to easily access the city’s financial information online. OpenGov Budgeting and Planning is a cloud software specifically created for governments to use.

“OpenGov is a very user-friendly tool for Birmingham residents to access the City’s 2024-25 budget,” Assistant City Manager Melissa Fairbairn said in an email. “Residents can use the links in the interactive digital budget book to quickly connect with the specific information that they seek.”

Birmingham Finance Director Mark Gerber said they decided to implement this program for several reasons.

“Currently, we’re using this program to develop our budget. What this software will be able to help us to do is gather information in a more efficient manner and be able to create  department pages that are a little easier to read,” Gerber said.

He said the first reason they decided to use OpenGov in Birmingham was that it would make it easier for residents to access budget information.

Gerber added that the software will also make the process of gathering information and building documents easier for city staff. He said he thinks it will save them time in the long run.

Officials said OpenGov will also give the city more ways to be transparent with the public. This summer they are working on developing a way to make it easier for someone from the public to find out specific budget information, such as information about how much was spent in a particular department over several years.

While developing their online budget book with OpenGov, Gerber said, the city looked at other communities throughout the country who had already been using OpenGov, including the city of Royal Oak.

“We did look at theirs to kind of get an idea of what is working in a real environment and see what we could do with a product,” Gerber said.

The 2024-2025 recommended city budget is now available to view. Among the many parts of the budget is a five-year capital improvement plan.

The budget information is also available in a PDF version and a flipbook version. Prior to the implementation of OpenGov, the budget was only available in PDF documents.

All versions can be accessed at bhamgov.org/budget.