C S M F O
City of Ukiah & Midpeninsula Open Space District
Innovation Awards
In 2019, CSMFO received 124 applications for our awards programs, with 161 CSMFO members volunteering their time to serve as budget, CAFR and innovation reviewers. (104) of the applications received were for the Operating Budget Award Program, (2) for the Capital Budget Award Program, and 2 for the Innovation Award Program. The Innovation Award recognizes innovation in public sector finance in a variety of areas, including accounting, treasury, and procurement. An Innovation Review Panel comprised of CSMFO board members and Recognition Committee leadership score the applications. The Innovation Review Panel can choose to present up to three awards per year. We are pleased to present two Innovation Awards this year: The first Innovation Award, and in no particular order, goes to the City of Ukiah for their Electronic Budget. Over the last two years, the City of Ukiah has taken budgeting to new heights in an effort to streamline their budget process. Partnering with OpenGov, the City budget team worked with Council to establish a centered focus on transparency. The City of Ukiah created an interactive budget book that is meant to be all electronic. Various reports were created and uploaded to the OpenGov platform. These reports give the reader an interactive experience by allowing them to review the budget data at a high level or drill down for detail. Budget to actual information is live data that is updated each evening for tracking and use by all types of end users. The second Innovation Award goes to Midpeninsula Open Space District for their Midpeninsula Project Central. The Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, or Midpen, is a special district managing over 63,000 acres of public land in 26 open space preserves in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties. As a Special District, they are a small team managing many large projects to protect natural open space lands, construct public access improvements, and restore and enhance open space land. Midpen developed Project Central to unify project information and financials to improve collaboration and transparency. Project Central is a project management system which provides a tool for project managers to store and collaborate on documents, track project tasks and budgets, and communicate project status across the organization. Project Central’s dashboards roll up project statuses, providing the executive team summary level views across Midpen’s project portfolio.
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CSMFO Conference Magazine
