Strategic Budgeting in Winchester, VA

In partnership with AWS. This case study originally appeared on e.Republic.

Winchester, VA, has approximately 28,000 residents, about 500 employees, and a budget slightly over $200 million. Chief Financial Officer Mary Blowe’s team of seven acts as the fiscal agent for the court system, social services, the police department, and more. With OpenGov, her small finance team can effectively and accurately showcase performance on priorities with automatic daily data updates.

The City’s 2021-2026 online strategic plan lays out five goals: Working Winchester, Building Winchester, Strengthening Winchester, Moving Winchester, and Supporting Winchester. Using OpenGov, the finance team visually communicates the plan via an easy-to-understand web page that pulls data directly from a transparency portal. The plan lists the objectives and related actions for each goal and uses narrative text, dashboards, maps, photographs, graphics, and other components to illustrate how well the city is meeting its objectives.

“The objectives and performance measures are translated into bar charts or other visual options to graphically depict the story that you see online,” Blowe says. “If you’re talking about the additional linear feet of sidewalk concrete, for example, a nice picture of the City’s recent sidewalk work gives people a visual frame of reference. All the performance measures are in one place, and those stories are the way departments communicate internally, too.”

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