‘Sunshine Page’ increases access to Athol’s public records, financials

The town of Athol has launched a new “Sunshine Page” on its website to increase public access to the town’s financial documents, contracts and data.

Documents on the page – complete with smiling sun logo – include budget documents, contracts for the town manager and unions, economic development data, and a link to vendor ClearGov’s Athol page, which displays town demographic and financial data in an easy-to-read graphical format.

The genesis for the Sunshine Page (http://www.athol-ma.gov/home/pages/athol-by-the-numbers) predates Town Manager Shaun Suhoksi’s hiring in 2014. In trying to research details about the town’s finances and government functions, he found the town’s website cumbersome to navigate and lacking both the information he needed and tools like online payments.

“You could find the town charter, but I think what had happened over the years was the natural creep and progression of documentation,” Suhoski said. “You keep adding on and adding on, but you never reorganize. It was difficult to gain anything of value.”

After his hiring, Suhoksi wanted to make a revamped, customer-friendly website a priority, and a town team began working on it. That included the “Sunshine Page,” which draws its name from the media’s annual Sunshine Week that promotes public access to government information and public records.

“I just wanted us to be on the forefront of that,” Suhoski said. “People should be able, from their home, 24/7, to look at the key public documents, at least. You can’t facilitate every document under the sun – we wouldn’t have a way to organize it – but we want to start building this with topline documents and information.”

As the website overhaul was underway, Suhoski noticed ClearGov’s product, which draws on Department of Revenue data to present information about cities and towns in an interactive visual format. Suhoski became a beta tester for the product, working with the company and the town accountant to flesh out details for the ClearGov page.

“You have numbers you can relay and then the ability to compare to other communities, and you can look at comparative criteria as well,” he said. “This other interface, when I saw the graphics, that was something beyond what I could conjure up or do here. We don’t even have an IT director. I thought that would be an added value to this Sunshine Page.”