Table of Contents
What Data Holly Collects
Where the Data Comes From
How Data Gets Into the Platform
Salary Calculation Methodology
What Data Holly Collects
Holly collects three types of data for your agency's data and your peer agency's data within the Holly platform:
Class Specifications (Job Descriptions): The full text of each position's class spec, including definition, typical tasks, minimum qualifications, knowledge and abilities, and any license requirements. This powers Holly's similarity analysis, AI-assisted editing, and benchmarking features.
Salary Schedules: Pay ranges and step tables for each position, including minimum, midpoint, and maximum salaries. Holly uses this data to populate salary benchmarking in both the Internals and Market tabs.
MOUs (Memoranda of Understanding): Collective bargaining agreements linked to each classification by bargaining unit. These are stored as reference documents and surface alongside class specs in the “Market” tab's detailed view.
Where the Data Comes From
Holly's data team researches and collects compensation data from publicly available government sources. For most jurisdictions, this includes:
Job description platforms like GovernmentJobs (NeoGov), which host class specs
Salary schedule PDFs published on agency websites or within MOUs / CBAs
Direct agency websites for jurisdictions not on NeoGov
For jurisdictions where compensation data is not publicly posted, Holly may pursue public records requests (FOIA) or work with third-party labor market data providers (with client permission)
Once sources are identified, Holly's data team scrapes and processes the raw files into a standardized format before uploading them to the platform.
To learn more about the data refresh process, check out this article!
How Data Gets Into the Platform
Holly's data pipeline follows these steps for every jurisdiction:
Research — Identify public sources for class specs, salary schedules, and MOUs
Scrape — Extract data from PDFs, web pages, and structured files into a standardized format
Cleaning - We review extracted data to confirm it is coherent and organized
Match & Validate — We align job titles and codes between salary schedules and class specs, and flag any anomalies for review. Quality checks at this stage include:
Confirming the number of classifications looks reasonable for the agency's size
Verifying source URLs point to the correct jurisdiction
Checking that salary values are plausible
Scanning for duplicate job titles or missing required fields
Upload — Import the finalized data into the platform via Holly's data import tool
When Data Issues Are Identified
If Holly's team identifies a potential data quality issue during this process, we flag it internally for awareness but do not alter the underlying data — this ensures what you see in Holly matches the agency's official source documentation.
When Data Is Incomplete
Not all jurisdictions publish complete data publicly. Here's how Holly handles common gaps:
No class specifications available: We will still include job titles and salary data. Note that classifications without descriptions are unlikely to appear as suggested benchmarks, since Holly's similarity analysis relies on the full text of a class spec to determine similarities. However, they can always be manually added to a benchmark set.
No salary data available: We will display the classification and description without salary information.
Salary Calculation Methodology
What Data Source Holly Uses for Salaries
Holly pulls salary data from each jurisdiction's officially published salary schedule, the document an agency uses to define pay ranges for each classification. Holly only uses salary information from job descriptions if there is no separate salary source. This is because salary schedule figures tend to be more current than the dollar figures appear in the job description source.
How Holly Calculates Annual Salary
Salary schedules publish pay in a variety of formats depending on the jurisdiction. If annual is provided, Holly will default to using that value. Otherwise, Holly will calculate the annual value based on the pay frequency provided. Holly standardizes all salaries to an annual figure using the following conversions:
Pay Frequency | Conversion |
Hourly (40 hrs/week) | × 2,080 |
Weekly | × 52 |
Biweekly | × 26 |
Monthly | × 12 |
Some jurisdictions use non-standard calculation methods that may produce slightly different annual figures than Holly's standardized approach. If you notice a discrepancy between the salary shown in Holly and an agency’s records, please reach out to our team at [email protected].
Salary Steps
Where a position has multiple salary steps, Holly retains each step individually. The minimum salary shown in benchmarking views reflects Step 1 (or the lowest listed rate), and the maximum reflects the highest step. Midpoint is calculated as the average of minimum and maximum.
Special Position Categories
Some position types do not fit a standard salary schedule format. Holly handles the following as best as possible given available data, but coverage may be limited:
Part-time and contract positions
Public safety roles with non-standard 40 hour workweeks (ex. firefighters, police)
Healthcare workers
Seasonal and temporary workers
Elected officials and commissioners
If you believe data for your agency or a peer agency is missing or inaccurate, contact us at [email protected].