Open the Books

OpenTheBooks.com is an American nonprofit organization based in the Chicago suburb of Burr Ridge, Illinois. It describes itself as a transparency group devoted to posting online all the disclosed spending of every level of government across the United States. Their oversight reports on government spending have been featured on multiple news outlets including C-SPAN's hour-long Q&A program with Brian Lamb, ABC Good Morning America, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and USA Today. History OpenTheBooks.com was founded in 2011 by its chief executive officer Adam Andrzejewski, an Illinois entrepreneur and past Republican candidate for governor, with former United States Senator Dr. Tom Coburn as the honorary chairman. In 2006, legislation co-sponsored by then-senator Barack Obama (D) and then-senator Tom Coburn (R) — the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 — was passed to allow public access to United States Federal Government spending. In 2013, OpenTheBooks sued then-Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka (R) for all disclosed state checkbook transactions. The comptroller had rejected the group's Freedom of Information Act request calling it an 'undue burden.' After public backlash the Comptroller ultimately released the data from fiscal year 2005 forward in 2014. In 2014, OpenTheBooks became the first and only organization to publish all disclosed federal spending including salaries, contracts, grants, direct payments, and farm subsidies. The organization also created a Mobile App which provides access to all the data collected and was recognized on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. In 2015, state checkbook spending was added to both the website and mobile app. Between 2015 and 2017, the group has published 11 oversight reports on federal agency spending.