searchable database of employee names and salaries
Last year the website DFWSalaries.com launched and provided a new level of government transparency into public pay that had not been seen within the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. The web site provides a searchable database of employee names and salaries for people working for cities within the D/FW metroplex.
This year, the website may be updated with 2010 salaries and provides even greater ability for anyone to investigate employee salaries and track public spend.
By compiling employee salaries into a searchable database, citizens, employees and government watchdogs can now monitor how cities biggest expenses, employee salaries, are spent. The site’s search choices set it apart and allow the layman to conduct a thorough evaluation of public pay. An inquiring mind can find out what Dallas pays its Administrative Assistants without having (or with) having a name, and make comparisons across numerous cities. The website also offers the average salary for the positions, based on the job title. “One caveat to generalizing the job titles, nevertheless, is that just simply because the jobs might have the exact same title, they may not have the same responsibilities across cities in the metroplex area,” the creator said.
In addition to calculating the average salaries, the website also ranks employees by their placement within their Position, Department, City and Metroplex. For instance, a user can search for a specific Fire Captain by their name and see exactly where that person ranks within his Position, within the City and inside the metroplex.
They can also see how that person’s salary compares against the typical salary for that placement within the metroplex. This kind of ranking advantages employees to identify if they’re becoming paid fairly, in comparison to their coworkers.
The site has been met with some opposition, and has been criticized as becoming an invasion of privacy, nevertheless, the site was prepared with open records request which can be obtained by anybody.
The public pay is open record, and city salaries represent taxpayer dollars.
DFWSalaries.com merely makes the records a lot more available and enables any individual to review the public pay.
While the website does supply a base line for comparison, it does fall short in providing some information that’s really essential. The site does not address employee performance, or tenure, nor does it present other payments in addition to base pay. The site could be much improved by providing total salaries, which includes overtime and other payments, as its sister website, http://www.sanfranciscosalaries.com has done for San Francisco employees.
Additionally to the DFW Metrpolex, there are sister sites for Austin, San Francisco and Miami with additional websites for Philadelphia, Denver, D.C., Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Atlanta, underway.