State of Nebraska “Nebraska Spending” Website

The State of Nebraska’s budget transparency website– “Nebraska Spending”– was created in July 2007 as part of several accountability reforms initiated by the State Treasurer’s office. The website allows Nebraskans to access state revenue and spending information in a straightforward and comprehensible format. The website includes:

• Fiscal Year Expenditures, which provides transaction-level detail on the expenditures made by the state. Such information is formatted in a searchable database that can target spending down to accounts such as “Board & Lodging.”
• Current Fiscal Year Budget, which includes a pie chart that details each agency’s percent of the state’s overall appropriation, as well as definitions of the different funds that provides resources to each agency.
• Source of State Funds, which shows the dollars received by the state, the source of dollars, and a historical comparison using bar graphs.
• School and Local Budgets, which uses a color-coded county map to include budgetary data from local governments and school systems across the state
• University of Nebraska Spending, which includes funding and expenditure data from the four main campuses of Nebraska’s state-sponsored university.  

The initiative highlighted on this page was identified and researched by students from Northwestern University as part of a course that was a collaboration between Northwestern University School of Continuing Studies and the OIG.  This research was done by Kaasha Benjamin, Alex Katz, Peter O’Neill, and Kyra Weiss, Winter Quarter 2012. For a full transcript of their research please contact instructor Donald Gordon at donald-gordon@northwestern.edu.