Wichita, KS Budget Visualizations

Understanding the city budget by visualizing data, providing a forum for dialogue, and sharing essential information about the budget process.

What we do

Open Budget: Wichita promotes a deeper understanding of the city budget, so that citizens, officials, and other stakeholders can engage in more informed dialogue about how the Wichita Budget currently works and how it should work in the future.

How we do it

• We work with community groups to learn what aspect of the budget is most relevant to them, and how it would be best shared with the public.
• We work with Wichita Budget Office to access budget data and present it in a simple, useful format.
• We visualize Wichita's budget data, and share resources for people to create their own visualizations and analyses.
• We use tools that are free, open-source, and require minimum technical skill.
• We stimulate dialogue and provide a forum for the Wichita community to discuss the budget.

Now that you know our goals, join us in Slack and share your ideas!

Who we are

Open Budget: Wichita is the result of many contributors including coders, community advocates, and city officials. We're looking for ideas and help, so get in touch and join in at our regular meetups. We have in-person meetings (please check meetup.com for location and time) and on-line virtual meetings on Slack.

How would you use this tool?

We're trying to build a tool that's useful to all of Wichita — community advocates, journalists, city officials, and the people they serve. The project idea originated in Oakland, CA as Open Budget Oakland. Then it was forked by Open Budget Oklahoma City, a project under Code for OKC from which our project was in turn forked.

We want your ideas!

• What part of the budget should be visualized, and how?
• What budget data should be accessible, and why?
• Who should be part of this discussion?