Demystifying Council's Budget Process

🏆 Awards

The tool won a national communications award in 2023.

Challenge

City budgets are notoriously complex documents—hundreds of pages of financial data, arcane terminology, and interconnected funding streams that even policy experts struggle to navigate. For the average citizen wanting to understand how their tax dollars were being spent, Seattle's budget was essentially a black box. This lack of transparency created barriers to meaningful civic participation in one of the most important functions of local government.

Solution

I initiated and led the development of an innovative digital platform that transformed Seattle's complex budget into an accessible, interactive tool for citizens. We built an interactive website that breaks the process down into digestible pieces, makes it easy to understand, and is interactive - unfurling one piece at a time as you scroll down the page. I did all the coding and designed the graphics and branding, which were used in other budget communications as well.

Technical Details

Built with React, the tool helped create overall context for the user, giving a sense of the entire process and how and when to effectively engage. The entire tool was coded from scratch, underwent user testing to increased its efficacy, and had to be fit into a CMS replete with technical constraints.