Home

Current Documents

• Workflow Background -- for the 23-Feb-2013 ATX Civic Hackathon III (http://www.open-austin.org/article/137)
• Current Development Notes
• Forms Inventory

Historic and Background Documents

• 20 Feb 2013 / Status
• POC Background -- for the 8-Sep-2012 CfA Hackathon (http://codeacrossaustin.eventbrite.com/)

---

Problem Statement

Develop an application that:

• automates campaign filings for local, non-judicial races in Texas (e.g. Austin Mayor and City Council seats)
• conforms to state requirements
• conforms to city requirements, both process requirements from City Clerk Office and technical requirements from Communications and Technology Management (CTM)
• provides public functions to support transparency
• based on robust and widely supported open source framework and libraries
• community developed and released as open source

Why This is Important

• Local open government and transparency advocates have been urging the city to move to electronic filings. A strong effort could have a system in place by the end of the year, in time for the next municipal election (May 2013). (That's an aggressive goal, and it's why we need to rally support quickly.)
• Initial cost estimates by the city have been $800K and about a year time, incorporating proprietary enterprise technology (.NET, SQL Server, etc.) An open source alternative could save taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, not to mention show the power of available open source frameworks and tools.
• The campaign finance filing requirements are established by the State of Texas Ethics Commission (http://www.ethics.state.tx.us/). That means any Texas municipality could deploy this. It would be a huge impact in support of open source and community developed technology.

Stakeholders

• City of Austin, City Clerk -- Administers local campaign filings. The workflow and process must meet their needs.
• City of Austin, Communications and Technology Management (CTM) -- CTM is the city's IT department. They would have ultimate responsibility for deployment and maintenance. The end product must meet their technical requirements.
• Local Campaign Treasurers -- These people are responsible for filings on behalf of a campaign. They should be engaged to ensure the process works for them.
• Local Public Advocates -- These people are interested in government transparency and openness issues. They should be engaged to ensure they can access the data in the ways they need, and for input on query, reporting, or visualization functions.

Resources

Office of the City Clerk, City of Austin: http://www.austintexas.gov/department/city-clerk

• Elections Department: http://www.austintexas.gov/department/elections
• Campaign Treasurer Appointments: http://www.austintexas.gov/department/campaign-treasurer-forms
• Campaign Finance Reports: http://www.austintexas.gov/department/campaign-finance-reports

Texas Ethics Commission: http://www.ethics.state.tx.us/index.html

• Local Filers and Filing Authorities: http://www.ethics.state.tx.us/main/local.htm
• Local Non-Judicial Candidate/Officeholder Forms & Instructions: http://www.ethics.state.tx.us/filinginfo/localcohfrm.htm