Public Financial Data Platform

The Challenge

FIT aggregates a vast amount of financial information submitted annually by over 2,000 local governments across Washington State. The dataset includes revenue sources, expenditures, debt information, and financial health indicators, and other data points relevant to the government type.

While the data was valuable, the original interface made it difficult for many users to navigate, analyze, and interpret the information. At the same time, FIT had a growing base of power users demanding a slew of new functionality.

Key challenges included:

• Presenting complex financial datasets in a way that is accessible to both experts and non-experts
• Helping users quickly locate specific governments or categories of financial data
• Enabling meaningful comparisons across years, jurisdictions, government types, and by other parameters
• Supporting different exploration paths, from quick lookups to deep analysis
• Ensuring the system could scale as new datasets and reporting categories were added
• Bringing all user flows and functionality to mobile and tablet users

SAO needed a user experience that could surface meaningful insights while reducing friction for users exploring complex public data, on any device.

The Approach

Bilberrry worked closely with SAO stakeholders to understand how different audiences interact with government financial data.

The team identified key workflows that users rely on when analyzing financial information, whether researching a specific jurisdiction, comparing governments, comparing changes over years, or exploring statewide financial trends.

The design effort focused on several key principles:

• Make complex data approachable through clear navigation and visual hierarchy
• Support multiple exploration paths for both quick searches and deeper analysis
• Prioritize discoverability, helping users quickly find relevant governments and datasets
• Introduce new features exposing more granular financials and additional ways of analyzing and comparing the data.
• Design for scalability, allowing the platform to grow as new data sources and features are added
• Ensure a mobile-friendly experience for all user flows and features

The Solution

Bilberrry designed a refreshed user experience that simplifies how users explore and analyze government financial data, while simultaneously offering experts power-user features for deeper comparison and insights.

Data Exploration Experience

The redesigned interface enables users to explore financial data across governments through clear navigation, filtering, and search tools. Users can explore data through several perspectives, including:

• By Government – view financial data for a specific city, county, district, or agency
• By Government Type – compare financial trends across categories such as cities, counties, fire districts, public utility districts, school districts
• By Dollars – analyze revenue streams and expenditure categories statewide
• By Financial Health – review indicators assessing the government’s financial stability

This flexible structure allows users to move seamlessly between high-level insights and detailed financial analysis across multiple years.

Government Profiles

Each jurisdiction has a dedicated profile page that organizes financial information and other relevant information in a clear, structured format. These profiles allow users to:

• Understand the jurisdiction at a glance (type, size, location)
• View revenues and expenditures across multiple fiscal years
• Analyze trends over time
• Compare financial performance against similar governments
• Explore indicators designed to highlight financial health

Interconneted Navigation

Interconnected navigation and data relationships allow users to move seamlessly between dimensions of the dataset, such as category, jurisdiction, government type, and time period. From any view, users can pivot the data to compare the same category across jurisdictions, explore related categories, or view trends across multiple years without losing context.

Flexible Data Views

Different users approach financial analysis in different ways, so the interface supports customizable views and filtering tools. Users can sort, filter, and customize the dataset to focus on specific fiscal categories, timeframes, or jurisdictions, making it easier to identify trends and insights within large datasets.

The Impact

The redesigned user experience makes the Financial Intelligence Tool more accessible, intuitive, and useful for a wide range of audiences.

Governments can better understand their own financial performance and compare themselves with peer jurisdictions. Policymakers and researchers gain clearer insights into statewide financial trends. And members of the public can more easily explore how government funds are collected and spent.

By improving usability and clarity, the platform helps the Washington State Auditor’s Office deliver on its core mission of making government financial data transparent, accessible, and actionable for everyone.