Open the Books and Citizen Portal Announce Partnership to Promote Transparency and Citizen Engagement
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – Open the Books and Citizen Portal today announced that they have entered a partnership agreement to help citizens access and use Open the Books’ vast database of government spending, which includes federal, state and local spending. For the first time a repository of what public officials say and do – at meetings and in statements – will be married with what they spend. The partnership will offer citizens the most exhaustive picture yet of how public officials work on their behalf.
Both organizations are led by CEOs who are accomplished leaders in the technology and transparency space. Citizen Portal CEO Paul Allen was one the co-founders of Ancestry.com while Open the Books CEO John Hart helped craft and pass landmark transparency legislation, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (Coburn/Obama), that put all federal spending online.
“With Ancestry.com, Paul Allen helped Americans discover their stories. With Citizen Portal, he’s going to help citizens write their stories. Our organizations share a conviction that advances in technology should serve the citizenry. We believe the best way to thwart a surveillance state is to create a surveillance citizenry. We’re committed to giving citizens the tools they need to hold government accountable,” Hart said.
“John Hart helped create the modern transparency movement and ecosystem of which Open the Books and Citizen Portal are a part. His work across the aisle with Senators Coburn and Obama demonstrates that reform can happen when people of good faith put First Principles over partisanship,” Allen said.
Open the Book’s tagline is its mission: Every dime. Online. In real time. Co-founded by the late Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books has built the largest repository of government spending data in history and conducts regular audits and oversight of government spending at all levels. Co-founder Craig Mijares leads Open the Book’s innovative data capture operation which includes nearly 60,000 unique units of government in all 50 states.
Citizen Portal's mission is to illuminate government action to amplify transparency, provide clarity, and fuel civic engagement. The platform leverages advanced artificial intelligence to surface, summarize, and organize government proceedings into accessible, searchable, and actionable information. Citizens, businesses, and civic organizations gain clear visibility into policy discussions, votes, budgets, and community priorities without the burden of attending hours of meetings or navigating complex bureaucratic systems. By transforming public information into practical insight, Citizen Portal strengthens civic trust, empowers accountability, and enables broader, more informed participation in democratic processes. To learn more and support the mission, visit CitizenPortal.AI.
“We intend to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary by putting transparency and citizen engagement at the center of our public life. Like Abraham Lincoln, we believe each generation has a responsibility to bring about ‘a new birth of freedom’ and ensure ‘that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.’ We look forward to creating new tools and initiatives that will defend and support our great experiment in freedom,” Hart and Allen said.
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