Open Data & Transparency Policy

Julio Gonzalez Altamirano

Dear Colleagues,

I've been collecting items & ideas from you and community members on how we can improve our sharing of our data, as well as the transparency of our actions. Below is a preliminary list for your consideration. My goal is to finalize our list/requirements and develop it into a resolution for Board action.

Thank you,

Julio

Open Data & Transparency Policy - Draft Items

Data we want to place on our website:

- Our entire, versioned, board packet for each meeting

- Updates to Board packet

- Board packet should be available to the public at same time as to Board

- Budget Page/Section (Proposed, Adopted, Amended)

- Audit & CAFR Page/Section

- Key Resolutions Page/Section

- Key Documents Page/Section

- KPI Raw Data

- Monthly Financial Reports

- Portfolio as CSV

- Committee assignments

- Org Chart

Routines that can help with transparency:

- Board Notification Policy

- Agenda is emailed to Board after it is posted 7 calendar days before

- Agenda is versioned

- Updates to agenda are emailed to Directors

- Emails from staff to Board indicate the recipients

- Documents shared w entire Board are placed on message board

- shfc domain emails (individual and group) that forwards to Directors

- Easy way for residents to sign up to be notified of new agenda being published

Jan Wenig

I appreciate you posting a list of proposed concrete steps toward increased transparency for future discussion by the Board. After giving this a more thorough review, I will post any additions or comments here on the Message Board.

Julio Gonzalez Altamirano

An addition to the items we want to place on our website: a page with video recordings of our meetings, as well as links from each meeting to its video recording.

Julio Gonzalez Altamirano

Dear Directors,

I have drafted an Open Data Policy, initial Open Data Inventory, and adoption resolution. This concept will be discussed at the F&A committee to determine feasibility for Board adoption. However, I welcome your suggestions in the event this policy area is of particular interest to you. Link to Word doc:

shfc_open_data_resolution.docx

Thank you.

Jan Wenig

Thank you, Director Altamirano for this contribution to our commitment to openness and accessibility as a public enterprise. The proposed resolution is timely, as we are in discussions with prospective candidates who may wish to apply for our current Board vacancy, one of whom searched our website for current financials, and found some in last year's Annual report, but was looking for more comprehensive and current data. This resolution if passed would satisfy those who wish to understand our financial status, which I agree needs to be readily accessible to the public. This resolution also allows staff to select out restricted data which are protected by law and regulation and which need to be confidential to our enterprise. I support this Resolution on first reading, and will add further comments, if any, after a more thorough review.

Julio Gonzalez Altamirano

Dear Colleagues,

As we revisit the Open Data policy, I thought it would be a good opportunity to check in on other high-performing housing finance organizations to see how they handle sharing information with the public.

As a refresher, I've attached the proposed initial data inventory from my resolution draft at the end of this message. The list falls into two broad categories: (1) existing documents that just need to be organized and consistently placed in the same web location (e.g. our audits) and (2) machine-readable data that we commit to update on a policy-based tempo (e.g. our property portfolio's information).

Presently, we already share many of the items covered under (1) on our website (Board materials, budgets, audits). We just don't do it based on a formal policy that creates firm expectations of what exactly will be shared and when. For example, I couldn't easily find our adopted budgets online. One can eventually find proposed versions of them via a search of our Board meetings. But that doesn't seem very user-friendly or at the level of transparency we aim for. Unsurprisingly, many of our peer agencies (PHAs, HFAs, HFCs) in Texas and across the nation have extensive online collections of basic documents, reports, and even performance dashboards.

I don't think we need to match everything these entities put online, but we just have to do a good job at what we deem truly matters to Travis County residents.

As for (2), right now, we don't seem to share any machine-readable data. The draft's starter inventory only has 3 requirements for machine-readable data that represent novel work (KPIs CSV, revenue forecast CSV, and the portfolio database). The last is probably the most important and the most work in the starter set.

Locally, the Austin Housing Finance Corporation (AHFC) has a detailed "Affordable Housing Inventory" with 2,426 rows and 52 columns as of this writing. You can view it at:

https://data.austintexas.gov/Housing-and-Real-Estate/Affordable-Housing-Inventory/ifzc-3xz8/about_data

The DC Housing Finance Agency (DCHFA) offers an example outside of our region. I am emphasizing DCHFA because, like SHFC, it operates much more like a public enterprise than a conventional government department and it has an appointed Board. DCHFA publishes a property-level Housing Finance Agency Portfolio. You can view the data set's page at:

https://opendata.dc.gov/datasets/DCGIS%3A%3Ahousing-finance-agency-portfolio/about

Both AHFC and DCHFA get to piggyback on the open data portals of their municipal governments. Travis County does have an open data portal. But hosting our own data sets may be more efficient since we will likely start with simple CSVs.

To conclude, I think the current state of peer practice supports developing a consistent policy on important documents and machine-readable data. On the latter, a thoughtful release of portfolio data appears to be the product with the most proven appeal.

JGA

APPENDIX - Proposed Data Inventory from 2025 draft policy

BOARD MATERIALS — Version-controlled board packet — PDF — Real-time upon distribution

BOARD MATERIALS — Meeting agenda — PDF — Real-time upon distribution

BOARD MATERIALS — Meeting minutes — PDF — Real-time upon adoption

BOARD MATERIALS — Video recordings — URL — Monthly

FINANCIAL — Proposed Budget — PDF + CSV — Real-time upon distribution

FINANCIAL — Adopted Budget — PDF + CSV — Real-time upon adoption

FINANCIAL — Amended Budget — PDF + CSV — Real-time upon adoption

FINANCIAL — Audit — PDF — Annually

FINANCIAL — Monthly Financial Report to the Board — PDF — Monthly

FINANCIAL — Annual Revenue Forecast — PDF + CSV — Annual

OPERATIONAL — KPI Database — CSV — Annual

OPERATIONAL — Property Database — CSV — Bi-Annual

ORGANIZATION — Organizational Chart — PDF — Annual

ORGANIZATION — Committee Assignments — PDF — Real-time upon change

POLICY — Key Board Resolutions — ODT — Real-time upon adoption

POLICY — Enterprise Policies — ODT — Real-time upon adoption

Jan Wenig

Thanks for re-opening this thread on Open Data and Transparency, Director Altamirano. It's hard to believe that the Board first stated this goal almost 3 years ago. I appreciate the updated information on our peers and those in other jurisdictions. I found the DCHFA open data to be well organized, and easy to digest. It was interesting to be able to see at-a-glance on their regularly updated bar charts where they stand in housing production vis a vis their goals. I would agree with you, that as an enterprise, Strategic is now in a position to put our values of transparency and accountability into practice in a way that was not available to us in 2023. One quick edit on your list of documents below: we have converted from monthly financial reporting to the Board, to quarterly financial reports, in aid of more clearly portraying the natural patterns of both income and expenses.