Over the next year, Salt Lake County commits to building out its infrastructure to measure performance and utilize data through a County-wide Dashboard. The commitment will be implemented through the coordinated efforts of the Deputy Mayor and the Director of Data and Innovation, every department in county government, partners at the State of Utah, and the countys independently elected officials.
Data will be uploaded into an open source platform managed by the State of Utah, and eventually include hundreds of state, federal, and county sources. This data will be used to inform the public about the progress the County is making toward a set of outcomes called The Future We Choose, focused on Healthy People, Healthy Places, Expanded Opportunities, and Responsive Government. Each County Department will identify outcomes and indicators, baseline data, and set three year targets. Progress on these outcomes will be on a website with a graphic interface, so residents can dive deeply into the issues they care most about. It is anticipated that 10% of residents, or 109,000 people, will use this service in its first year.
The Dashboard will be used to drive decision making across every level of government. Cabinet meetings will become data-driven discussions about programs and their benefit to taxpayers. Department Directors will allocate resources towards initiatives that demonstrate impact.
The Dashboard will support other innovation. For example, the County is implementing three Pay for Success projects in a portfolio approach. New data sharing agreements have been established across governments, providing a deeper understanding of the populations served by the various agencies. The University of Utah Policy Innovation Lab evaluation of Pay for Success will in turn inform the states Justice Reform Initiative.
The effort significantly expands and scales past work, introducing for the first time, the public accountability of a dashboard, and strengthens internal decision-making by adding a robust collection and use of data.
Q3 2015:
Internal and external communications plan
Presentation to County Council
Establish cross-functional teams of 50 employees
Identify 20 initial outcomes and 100 indicators, data source, baseline, and targets
Coordinate public input though seven focus groups (40 residents, 40 employees) and survey of 9,000 residents
Revise based on feedback
Develop MOU with state open data portal
Develop procurement for additional functionality (dashboard, decision making tools, budget transparency)
Q4 2015:
Finalize MOU with state
Release procurement for additional functionality
Establish Future We Choose committee of ten external data experts, demographers, economists from the University of Utah, the State, local tech companies
Approval of public dashboard elements by Mayor
Train employees on data upload to state portal
Q1 2016:
Update County Council on progress
Negotiate contract with additional functionality provider
Migrate initial 100 data sets for public dashboard
Create upload schedule of 500 data sets for internal dashboard from: Administrative Services, Community Services, Human Services, Public Works, Diversity Affairs, Financial Administration, Open Space Trust Fund, Property Tax Information, Regional Development, Justice Court, Tax Administration, Townships, Unified Fire and Police
Streamline complex data interface other sources (Jail, State, and federal agencies)
Build test site for public and internal dashboards
Beta test public dashboard
Q2 2016:
Public dashboard launch April 2016
Beta test internal dashboard
Internal dashboard launch June 2016
External communications launch
Cabinet uses dashboard June 2016
Departments use dashboard July 2016
Timeline for integrated programs
Pay for Success:
Q3 and Q4 2015: project development, operating and evaluation plans.
Q1 2016: develop the performance-based contracts and raise funding for the Initiative
Collective Impact for Homelessness:
Q3 and Q4 finalize objectives, collect data, baselines, and set targets.
Q1 2016: Begin year-long initiative to realign resources with needs, and build new services as needed
Kearns Placed Based Initiative:
Q3 and Q4: Present data and develop community based outcomes to improve the quality of life and economic health of this community
Governments across the country have started to use data to inform policymaking, from data dashboards to meetings to review metrics across departments. The challenge is how every government, city, county, and state, can build the right connective tissue to enable the comprehensive and informed use of data across departments and services, and to use data to create innovation and drive resources to what works.
Collecting data is only the beginning. Governments are often challenged to understand where data resides, what type of data is useful, whether new data needs to be collected, how to remove the silos of data collection within and across governments, and how to use data to drive accountability, transparency, and change. In order to successfully integrate data-driven decision making into government, governments need a comprehensive and thoughtful innovation agenda.
Building this kind of infrastructure requires thinking through data agreements and sharing protocols, identifying which type of data should be collected, implementing performance-based contracts, such as Pay for Success projects, using data to drive collective impact decision making, providing communities the data they need to create local change, and, above all, conditioning government to integrate data into its daily work.
