SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwired - Jul 18, 2017) - Socrata, the market leader in cloud-based solutions that enable governments to use data effectively to design, manage, deliver, and improve government programs, today announced Socrata Financial Insights to make government financial data more actionable for public servants and the people they serve.

Socrata Financial Insights enables government officials, leaders, analysts, program managers, and information workers to interactively explore budgetary, expenditure, and payroll data in real-time. Self-service access to cross-departmental and cross-jurisdictional financial and program performance data ensures that staff spend more time leveraging the data and less time searching across departments for the information they need. Clean visualizations and simple navigation make spending anomalies visually apparent, which provides clarity to identify and prevent waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars.

"Socrata Financial Insights enables public servants at all levels of an organization to understand complex government finances that in the past were left for accountants and analysts to interpret," said Kevin Merritt, Socrata founder and CEO. "Spreadsheets and PDF reports are cumbersome and often go unread; Socrata Financial Insights enables financial data to be surfaced to improve government program operations."

Designed to meet the demands of the largest, most data-savvy governments, Socrata Financial Insights offers a wealth of capabilities, including:

• Geographic insights for regional comparisons, benchmarking, and interjurisdictional analysis to enable counties, cities, and neighborhoods to see how they compare to one another

• Beautiful and interactive online reports and visualizations -- which can be accessed from any device including mobile, tablets, and desktop computers -- that replace custom, labor-intensive internal reports to save time and money

• Enhanced internal controls that bring data from siloed financial systems into a central repository that can be easily accessed and understood

• Fully Section 508 compliant features offer equal access to vital government data for people with disabilities

State, county, and city leaders face significant challenges -- from ensuring access to clean drinking water to reducing prescription opioid misuse to repairing crumbling infrastructure. With an aging public sector workforce and technology infrastructure and challenges in cross-departmental data sharing, Socrata Financial Insights helps elected officials and program managers easily discover and track how funds across departments and jurisdictions are being used to address pressing issues in their communities. Socrata Financial Insights enables governments to improve cost efficiency by leveraging a cloud-based solution, increase operational insights and financial oversight by making data visually accessible, and increase transparency and accountability by bringing disparate data together in one location.