2012 Issue 1. Special Report. in conjunction with. TheGovernment. Dashboard. a supplement to public cio magazine

Transcription

1 2012 Issue 1 t h e c e n t e r f o r d i g i ta l g o v e r n m e n t s Special Report in conjunction with TheGovernment Dashboard a supplement to public cio magazine

2 contents Data: CIO Friend or Foe? 4 The Dashboard Tells Its Own Story 6 The Birth of Dashboards 8 What Can a Dashboard Do For My Agency? 10 Potential Roadblocks Behind the Dashboard: Big Data and Key Performance Indicators 14 Information at your Fingerprints 17 Customizing the Dashboard View 18 Data Systems and Infrastructure 20 Future Trends in Data Analytics and Dashboards 22 Best Practices for Dashboard Implementations Sponsored by: 2 PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT

3 introduction Data: CIO Friend or Foe? If data is the common currency of the global economy, government is rich. Data is the common currency of the global economy, but it can also be a beast that needs to be tamed. According to a recent report by IDC, the world has moved into exabytes (bypassing gigabytes and petabytes which, appropriately, come from the words giant and monster in Greek), and it was expected that there would be 1,200 exabytes of digital data in To put that in perspective, the Economist notes that 1 exabyte of data would equal roughly 10 billion copies of its publication. 1 We no longer need data. We need data about our data. Maybe data about our data s data? It s headspinningly too much to comprehend, but somehow still fun to think about unless you are a government executive, armed with Microsoft Excel sheets built for a bygone era and tasked with an edict to cut costs and increase efficiency through datadriven decision-making. If data is indeed the common currency of the global economy, government is rich. Consider some of the data sources used by Maryland s Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (more on the successful actions of this department later): 8.7 million fingerprints and, until 2008, 92 different databases each with its own sign-on requirement and search criteria for information retrieval. This Special Report details a response to this data deluge the Government Dashboard. Dashboards as well as business intelligence and performance metric calculations help government cut through the complex clutter of rows and columns, to provide a simple visual representation of actionable metrics, key performance indicators of agency performance and meaningful analysis. In short, dashboards give us data about our data and tap its true potential to transform government in ways we had not imagined. PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT 3

4 The Dashboard Tells Its Own Story Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services Why it s important: Crackdown on Crime Maryland s violent crime rate is at its lowest level since 1975 in large part thanks to a focus by the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS) to track data and improve department performance. DPSCS provides local Maryland law enforcement agencies with a dashboard that serves as a single location for all information on a criminal subject, which enhances communication, data sharing and cooperation among law enforcement agencies. 2,3 City of Seattle Why it s important: 400 Percent Increase in Citizen Engagement Seattle provides more than 120 open datasets with information about city infrastructure and operations, shared in a standard format that is easy to download and use. It includes maps, forms, calendars, charts, filtered views, files and documents. Constituents can track actual performance to departmental objectives and use a map-based locator to find services and map events in their neighborhood. Seattle s user-friendly online data exploration, rich visualization and social sharing capabilities have led to a 400 percent increase in user adoption since it was launched in ,5 Federal IT Dashboard Why it s important: Billion Dollar Budget Boost The federal government put back $3 billion into U.S. coffers in a little over a year with its IT dashboard, launched in June The dashboard paired with regular in-person IT project meetings with the U.S. CIO known as TechStat sessions allows agencies to monitor the effectiveness of federal IT projects by evaluating project costs and to schedule, terminate or suspend under-performing projects. 6 4 PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT

5 Santa Clara County Social Services Agency Why it s important: Saving Employee Time Before the Santa Clara County Social Services Agency (SSA) implemented its dashboard-based performance management solution, an employee could spend several weeks collecting and reporting data to produce a mandated report. Total time to produce a report post-dashboard? Minutes. The system gives executives, administrators, managers and caseworkers self-service access to data and delivers operational reporting; analytics for research, evaluation and compliance reporting; and fraud detection, all accessible through easy-to-use dashboards. 7,8 Texas Education Agency Why it s important: Holistic Views of Students = Better Outcomes The Texas Education Agency is harnessing an unprecedented amount of fastchanging data to create a powerful and insight-packed set of dashboards. While most government dashboards provide a few summary-level metrics to a limited audience, Texas has charted a path to put a different, personalized dashboard on the desks of hundreds of thousands of educators. Detailed, research-based performance metrics will identify where a given student is struggling and allow a previously impossible holistic view of the student. The end result: better student outcomes. 9 Washington State Transportation Improvement Board Why it s important: Unifying Government with a Single Version of the Truth When Steven Gorcester took over as the head of the Washington State Transportation Improvement Board, he inherited a dump-truck s worth of problems. Among them was the fact that the agency couldn t balance its books, having awarded nearly twice as many dollars in grants as they had available to spend. The solution: a streamlined, honest and interactive dashboard that is open to the public. Gorcester s dashboard did more than display data it changed the conversation. By unifying everyone on a single version of the truth, the political debates melted away and real progress began. The dashboard initiative transformed the agency and its relationship with the public in a fundamental way. 10 PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT 5

6 he Birth of Dashboards 6 PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT

7 Collecting and analyzing data to improve government performance dates back to at least 1966, when Congress passed the Highway Safety Act. The act ordered the development of a data system to record automobile-related accidents, injuries and deaths. With this trove of data, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration could (and still can) examine reasons accidents occur, compare state laws and work to reverse the nation s accident fatality rate. 11 Thirty years later, the business of computer-based data management systems was booming, but government had moved into Big Data unwieldy information so massive in scope that it is difficult to collect, archive, analyze and manage using traditional technologies and methods. Despite its bulk, government organizations saw that they could create value from Big Data, but they needed to apply the appropriate combination of tools to produce previously unnoticeable insights. Data-driven decision-making is based on the principles of business intelligence and data analytics. Data collection, archiving, sorting, analysis and evaluation all work together to identify patterns, verify theories and establish relationships. In this process, raw data transforms into intelligence. However, this cryptic intelligence is largely undecipherable to the layman. It turns out that the manipulation of large data sets, and the use of statistical analysis methods and algorithmbased predictive models is even more complex in practice than it sounds on paper. These techniques result in complicated, multiple-columned and tabbed spreadsheets, largely undecipherable except to highly trained data and statistical analysts. Hence the need for dashboards. Dashboards are software-based solutions that transform lumps of data collected by agencies and their various data management systems into simple displays of key performance measures that let statistics shine and can communicate with multiple audiences. Because dashboards are designed to be intuitive and simple, they expand data access from highly trained data analysts to casual users. Public dashboards provide transparency and accountability and spur citizen involvement in governmental decision- and policy-making. An early dashboard is the NYPD s CompStat, developed in the 1990s. CompStat allows police leaders to submit weekly crime data of significant activities and crime patterns to the CompStat Unit, which collates it in a database and generates a citywide report that tracks and maps all crime activity. Dozens of police departments nationwide embraced the Comp- Stat model, including the city of Baltimore, whose then-mayor Martin O Malley was so impressed that he adopted the system to Dashboards are designed to be intuitive and simple expanding data access from highly trained data analysts to the casual user. track a variety of performance indicators in all municipal departments. Dubbed CitiStat, the mapbased performance management application tracks and addresses such issues as response time to public complaints; excessive employee absenteeism and overtime; pothole reporting and repair; snow and trash removal; and crime rate. But O Malley didn t stop there. CompStat had inspired CityStat and, when O Malley became Maryland s governor in 2007, StateStat was born. StateStat allows us to attack problems and make decisions very quickly, says Beth Blauer, executive director of the program. It has given government a level of agility that I never thought was possible before. 12 PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT 7

8 What Can a Dashboard Do For My Agency? Government leaders can use insight from the dashboard to determine program viability, identify weaknesses and make changes, and reallocate resources if necessary. Improve operational performance Governments use data management systems to collect and analyze operational data for enterprise resource planning (ERP), geographic information, financial and accounting, human resources, purchasing and procurement, and many others. Shining a light into administrative processes facilitates better management of organizational information flow, decisionmaking, productivity and costs. For example, the review process required by the Federal IT Dashboard resulted in the suspension or termination of numerous underperforming projects. 13 Often, the data these enterprise management systems collect is viewed as simply a by-product of the software available but not used. Or data experts pull lengthy spreadsheets or statistical analyses from these systems, and report relevant results back to agency managers and executives. Some agencies or departments may be able to benefit from a standalone dashboard that provides a view of a single function. Standalone dashboard capability may be built into the data management system, or derived from software that is developed or purchased separately. But the highest value comes from combining multiple streams of data with dashboard technology, because it can provide an integrated, complete, accessible and user-friendly view of administrative performance. The Texas Education Agency s dashboard project is a good example. Not only do teachers not have enough data about their kids, they also don t know what they don t have, according to Adam Jones, deputy commissioner at the agency. Brian Rawson, director of Statewide Data Initiatives at the same agency, agrees that the challenge is getting the right information to the right people, in the right context. The fact that this data is all in one place... you could finally see the correlation between grades, attendance and assessments, says Rawson. It was the combination of different streams of data that made the difference PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT

9 Lower costs By improving agency performance and providing insight into underperforming programs and projects, dashboards and performance metrics have tremendous potential to create cost efficiencies. They provide hard evidence to support tax dollar-saving process changes. The most profound thing that I think we learned is what causes overtime to go up, says Secretary Maynard of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS). The StateStat model called attention not just to the data but to the drivers of the data. It turns out there are 8 to 10 factors that affect overtime. Collectively, they re hard to deal with but if you tackle them individually you can make headway. DPSCS discovered that overtime was driven by the number of inmates that were placed in off-site hospitals, which requires the use of 24-hour supervision by correctional officers 10 officers for every week that an inmate was in the hospital. They also found that many inmates were kept in the hospital far longer than necessary. Through StateStat, DPSCS was able to change its processes and save $12 million in overtime costs in the last two years. 15 Boost service delivery Dashboards and performance metrics can also be applied to the information systems that are used to collect and manage tactical agency data, such as building permits, parking tickets, pothole repairs and crime trends. By integrating this data with dashboards, governments and their constituents can gain great insight into the delivery of citizen services. Dashboards can show the areas where an agency is meeting or exceeding its mission as well as areas where improvement is needed. Government leaders can use this insight to determine program viability, identify weaknesses and make changes, and reallocate resources if necessary. Every agency is benefiting from the StateStat process, in part because it provides an opportunity to have a predictable, scheduled interaction with the Governor s Office, without having a fire to put out, says Maryland s Blauer. You measure what you re doing, you get feedback and you impact the dayto-day performance of the agency. Promote accountability and transparency As data analysis techniques and technologies mature, the pressure for government agencies to meaningfully measure and communicate performance outcomes intensifies. Today s transparency and accountability efforts are primarily focused on providing citizens, funders and other government agencies with easy-to-access online data. The Federal IT Dashboard is an example of a successful transparency effort. Representing a major leap forward for federal IT accountability, all available public information is displayed. Only sensitive procurement data is not included. IT investment information made available by the dashboard includes CIO name and ; awarded contracts including amount, vendor, and start and end dates; performance measures, such as baseline results, target results, actual results and CIO rating of a program; and cost and schedule information. This high degree of sunshine can be mimicked at the state and local level as well. The citizens of Seattle, for example, are enthusiastic users of Federal Dashboards At a Glance Recovery.gov tracks spending related to the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA.. IT Dashboard provides details of federal information technology investments. USAspending.gov contains information about federal financial awards and grants. Performance.gov tracks agency spending and performance. Reginfo.gov allows citizens to track proposed agency rules. FDA-TRACK monitors over 100 FDA program offices. Foreign Assistance provides information on foreign assistance spending. Data.Medicare.gov, data.medicare.gov, displays information and comparisons of hospitals, dialysis facilities, home health agencies, nursing homes and medical equipment suppliers. the city s data portal, Data.Seattle.Gov, where they can review annual budget details, real-time 911 data and permitting information. Users can create and share their own views of data. For example, they could create a filter on building permits which shows all building permits in a certain census tract or zip code, and share that view on the portal, allowing other users to see the same data. PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT 9

10 Potential Roadblocks 10 PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT

11 Changing the way decisions are made is a major shift for most public sector organizations. Often, jurisdictions without data analysis capability make decisions and measure outcomes through the use of gut feelings. The use of data analysis and dashboards eliminates instinct and guesswork and promotes fact-based decisions and performance measurement. Data changes a work environment by eliminating multiple versions of the truth: The only truth is the one backed by solid, properly analyzed data. Although this is a major benefit, some employees may resist because they fear that data will be used against them, negatively impact their job or create other undesirable changes. Direction needs to come from the top down. For example, President Obama s emphasis on performance management and open government made culture change an imperative for federal agencies. Now, the federal government is at the forefront of the use of publicly available, dashboard-driven performance measurement and analysis. When implementing its training dashboard, the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) handled this challenge by pushing through and letting the results speak for themselves. We changed an established process. By empowering law enforcement officers to manage their own training, we changed the way training managers did their jobs, says Mitch Coppin, POST CIO. In the end, training managers could see that the dashboard made them more efficient by allowing them to focus on the more strategic parts of their job. Data misinterpretation Results of data analysis can be misinterpreted due to false assumptions about cause and effect. Common mistakes include: Confusing correlation with causation The infrequent or inconsistent use of analytics tools The application of results from small groups to larger cohorts Misleading results produced by inference-based analysis Unintentional manipulation of results by the researcher When combining multiple data sources or migrating databases, information may be coded differently or entered inconsistently, resulting in an apples-to-oranges comparison. Or, 10 entries for John Smith could signify the same person 10 times, or 10 different people. Many of these mistakes can be prevented by using the appropriate and consistent data entry, analysis and cleaning techniques to ensure data integrity; and by including metadata that provides context, documentation, and details about origin or previous manipulation. Data ownership Data ownership is a murky area. Data can easily be copied and redistributed and it s not yet apparent who owns; who can access; and who can use raw data, raw personal information, the results of a statistical analysis or even the data that is generated from digitally analyzing large amounts of data. When multiple agencies and datasets are involved the situation gets murkier. Furthermore, who makes these decisions about data? The Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS) is making headway with this issue. The department is comprised of more than 20 agencies, each with its own data collection tools and techniques. Its dashboard for local law enforcement required integrating and using data from all of these sources. To resolve ownership issues, the StateStat team and DPSCS leadership pulled together all internal stakeholders and, based on discussion and feedback, assigned responsibilities and determined access. Security and privacy Security threats come in the form of hacking attacks, viruses, malware and other cybercrimes aimed at stealing private data. Privacy is a concern when anonymity is compromised by techniques that reveal information or breach confidentiality. In addition to constituent data, tactical and operational data are also valuable assets that must be protected. Security and privacy concerns, particularly those regarding personal constituent data, have led to a proliferation of federal and state legislation, regulations and standards with which the public sector must comply. Federal and state mandates such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) require the responsible and secure use and archiving of data to ensure privacy and protect against security breaches. Compliance is often considered time consuming and resource intensive, but adhering to these and other measures is a critical and effective way of maintaining data security and privacy. PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT 11

12 Behind the Dashboard: Big Data and Key Performance Indicators Big Data: The Foundation of the Dashboard In both the public and private sectors, mobile phones and other Internet-connected devices, embedded networked sensors and meters, enterprise data management systems, social media networks, and even security and traffic camera systems generate and collect enormous volumes of data about customers, employees, purchases, suppliers and operations. Mentioned previously, Maryland s Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS) contains nearly 8.7 million fingerprints; GPS monitoring for certain parolees; electronic check-in kiosks for low-risk parolees in its field offices, 16 and until 2008, 92 different databases each with its own sign-on requirements and search criteria for information retrieval for criminal and background information. We had to cross-reference multiple databases for different aspects of one person s record parole records, handgun registration, sex offenders, etc., explains DPSCS Secretary Gary Maynard. Checking criminal background was complex and time consuming. The DPSCS tamed its criminal and background check data by creating a Law Enforcement Dashboard that consolidates data from the 92 databases into a single platform. Now, law enforcement can find a person s entire criminal and background record in minutes instead of hours. Not only can Big Data be used to create operational efficiencies, it can also be mined for tremendous value knowledge that can be uncovered using properly applied data analytics and business intelligence tools and techniques, including: data mining extracting patterns from data to reveal new knowledge; benchmarking evaluating and comparing business processes and results to known industry best practices and measures; and predictive analytics determining relationships among data variables and using them to predict future outcomes, trends and behaviors. KPIs: The ABCs of the Dashboard A key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric, tied to a predetermined benchmark, indicating in some way whether the target has been achieved. They are measurements, or combinations of measurements, that help governments evaluate program and agency outcomes and determine the health of an organization s administrative and operational systems. They can be compared to the benchmark or serve as a simple notification. 17 KPIs vary across agencies, departments and constituents. On the operational side, there is a high demand by constituents to understand how resources are being applied, evaluate program and departmental effectiveness, and determine whether constituent services are delivered well and efficiently. State and local agencies, in particular, are making efforts to provide targets and KPIs that help improve constituent satisfaction. KPIs can be used to measure output, efficiency or effectiveness. Output KPIs are simple tallies of accomplishments; for example, the number of potholes repaired each month. Efficiency KPIs gauge the use of resources; for example: the cost to repair each pothole, or the number of workers needed to 12 PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT

13 Seattle CTO Bill Schrier says that determining KPIs and corresponding benchmarks is one of the most important parts of performance measurement, especially for citizen-facing dashboards. repair each pothole. Effectiveness KPIs measure the quality of service performed; for example, the percentage of potholes repaired within 24 hours of being reported. 18 Seattle CTO Bill Schrier says that determining KPIs and corresponding benchmarks, which Seattle calls performance expectations, is one of the most important parts of performance measurement, especially for citizen-facing dashboards. To determine constituents primary concerns, his team talked to those in closest contact with them elected officials. We have thousands of performance expectations in city government, but we ve only published about 10 percent of them online, he says. My boss cares about how long it takes our department to respond to an internal PC service request, but the average citizen doesn t. However, they do care about crime, building permits, potholes, road repairs, broken streetlights, graffiti and abandoned cars, so let s focus on getting that information out there. Once the KPIs have been set, the next challenge is determining the target benchmark. For example, we promise that we will fill potholes within two business days of a citizen report, and we measure ourselves against that, Schrier says. Everybody had a different opinion about how many days it should be. Should it be really easy to attain, like five days? Or should we challenge ourselves more? KPIs are typically designed to communicate information to the end user at a glance. A valuable KPI extracts value from raw data and makes it actionable, enabling staff, activities, budget and priorities to be evaluated for alignment with strategic objectives. Exponential Data Growth The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration s (NOAA) data management system predicts that the agency s amount of archived data will grow to more than 160,000 terabytes (TB) by 2020, due primarily to huge amounts of data being collected by remote sensing of the atmosphere, oceans, land and space. Exponential data growth isn t limited to large federal agencies like NOAA. For example, the data storage capacity requirements of Clackamas County, Ore., increased from 4 TB in 2005 to around 60 TB in Volume (terabytes) 180, , , , ,000 80,000 60,000 40,000 20, Calendar Year Source: PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT 13

14 Information at your Fingertips Maryland Emergency Management Agency Map Washington Transportation Improvement Board Dashboard 14 PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT

15 USASpending.gov dashboard Federal IT Dashboard Texas Student Data system PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT 15

16 Medicaid: The Perfect Storm Health and human services (HHS) agencies are straining under the pressures of budget cuts, staff reductions and aging IT systems. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Medicaid program. Medicaid administration and management is a perfect storm of a number of challenges that can be addressed by data analytics and business intelligence: 20 High costs. Medicaid is consistently one of the fastest-growing line items in federal and state budgets. Information silos. Multiple health and human services agencies often provide services to the same person. Yet the prevalence of siloed IT systems results in separate offices, forms, processes and data records for each service, causing confusion, frustration, inefficiency, additional costs and potential errors. Aging infrastructure. Originally designed to support provider claims, many aging state Medicaid management information systems struggle to handle the new functions they are required to manage. Enrollment increases. Medicaid enrollment is increasing dramatically as the recession forces more people out of jobs. In addition, the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) will expand Medicaid eligibility to between 20 and 30 million new applicants by Privacy and security concerns. Patient identification and healthcare data must remain private and secure in compliance with HIPAA. Health IT mandates. ARRA requires that most citizens should have access to an electronic health record by 2014, and also asks states to build a health information exchange (HIE) infrastructure to support the secure exchange of patient information. MITA framework. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is encouraging states to adopt its Medicaid Information Technology Architecture (MITA) to enable data sharing and consistency throughout the Medicaid program. Fraud, waste and abuse. Fraud, waste and abuse committed by beneficiaries, pharmacies, providers and sponsor plans increase costs for program recipients, taxpayers, the states and the Medicaid program. These unique challenges can shift the focus of Medicaid program administration from the IT system to the beneficiary. For example, multiple HHS agencies may interact with the same individual, providing food stamps, public housing and Medicaid. But that person interacts with many agencies, separate processes and siloed IT systems that generate multiple sets of uncorrelated, redundant data. By aggregating data from different HHS agencies, and applying business intelligence and data analytics technology and methods, governments can identify patterns that show where their Medicaid programs are effective or not, and implement changes that reduce costs and waste, enhance service and adhere to compliance requirements. HHS organizations can benefit from testing out this type of data-centric IT strategy in their Medicaid programs and gradually expanding it to other agencies and programs. 16 PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT

17 Customizing the Dashboard View The design of the dashboard should be based on what data is most relevant and important to its audience. Like the Federal IT Dashboard, a government organization may use a combination of internal dashboards for performance initiatives and external dashboards that meet public transparency and accountability initiatives. California s Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) has a single audience: California law enforcement officers and dispatchers. A dashboard can be static giving all users the same view of the measurements provided or dynamic using an interactive interface that lets viewers select various measurements to tailor their view. The term dashboard conjures images of gauges, dials and odometers a classic dashboard design. Other graphic tools used in dashboards include stoplights to indicate status; slider bars that the user can move to view how changing one variable affects others; and maps, charts, pie graphs and other graphic representations that can be easily digested, manipulated and understood. For example, The Texas Education Agency s student performance dashboards use a standardized structure to provide a personalized view to each teacher, counselor and school administrator in the state. They all see metrics tailored to their role, and the data that makes sense for them. By making the dashboard localized getting down to the individual student it enables the dashboard to become a truly effective operational tool. Most important to the dashboard design is the role of the user and the KPIs that are most meaningful and relevant to the user. Dashboard functionality can be customized to provide role-based insight to any level of government, from the chief executive to the private citizen and everyone in between. Access can be tailored to ensure privacy and data security. The following chart illustrates how dashboard perspectives might appear to different audiences, based on their roles. Role Elected or appointed official Agency head Program or department manager Individual contributors Constituent Potential Dashboard View Performance of multiple agencies and departments compared to goals Performance compared to corresponding departments in other similar agencies, states or municipalities Budget and financial overviews for all agencies Performance compared to corresponding departments in other similar agencies, states or municipalities Comparison of effectiveness and efficiency for multiple programs Actual vs. projected departmental spending Worker productivity measurements Actual vs. projected program spending Comparison to other similar departmental programs Individual workload management statistics Comparison between achieved and expected goals Training objectives and status Year-over-year performance (achieved goals) of programs and departments Status and schedule of services (e.g., pothole repair, street cleaning) How tax dollars are being spent PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT 17

18 Data Systems & Infrastructure Enterprise data management systems are widely used throughout the public sector to collect and manage data. Their purpose is to improve workflow and productivity and reduce paperwork in their respective functional areas. In state and local governments, enterprise data management systems generally fall into two categories: Administrative systems that handle operational data, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP); enterprise content management (ECM); work order management; customer relationship management (CRM); facilities, resource and real estate management; geographic information system (GIS); customer billing and taxation; talent management; and IT management systems for managing and tracking security issues, user identities, software and hardware assets, and application, system and network performance. Tactical data systems that collect specific agency data related to providing agency services, such as health and human services case management, police incident and accident reports, parking ticket and traffic stop data, arrest warrant information, EMS patient insurance data and treatment information, building inspection work orders and citations, public works ticket management, and other systems that create agency-related digital forms, and capture and manage documents. Organizations can integrate the data gathered by these and other systems with data analytics, business intelligence and reporting to deliver customized performance management. Data Infrastructure Options The California Commission on Peace Officer Standard and Training s (POST) dashboard is an example of a dashboard that can be an effective management tool even if it only tracks one or two measures for a single audience. This basic capability can be implemented by using the ad hoc reporting and dashboarding tools that are often included with most data systems, or by using out-of-the-box or customdeveloped software. Single-system dashboards are easy to deploy and use and don t overtax personnel or budgetary resources. An application can be developed internally, as California s POST agency did. It doesn t have to be a complex application, says POST s Coppin. It was worth the risk to put the dashboard out there, because if it failed, the cost was negligible. 18 PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT

19 An alternative is the software-as-aservice (SaaS) model, in which the application is hosted securely in the cloud by an IT vendor and billed on a subscription or per-use basis. This is probably the easiest solution to deploy: the software is already developed and tested, although it can be customized to meet a specific agency requirement. The time to delivery is extremely fast: deployment requires simple integration of data feeds to and from to the SaaS vendor. End users access the solution via Web browser over the Internet. Consolidating and combining information from both tactical and administrative systems to populate the government dashboard is a more complex and expensive implementation that transforms data into a functional management tool. One way to achieve this is to extract data from disparate data management systems and their separate databases into a data warehouse capable of relating all the organizational data as a whole, allowing data analysts to produce advanced, institution-wide and long-term analyses, reports and dashboards. For example, the Santa Clara County Social Services Agency integrated 11 different databases into a single data warehouse, simplifying data management and maintenance and reducing data duplication. When the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services consolidated 92 databases to create its Law Enforcement Dashboard, its IT specialists used a business intelligence tool to do the heavy lifting of mining and integrating the data. This prevented the delay that would have resulted from creating individual queries for each database. The department s mainframe database had to be configured with another tool that was in turn integrated with the business intelligence solution, which also provides dashboards and a Webbased interface. In these examples, the data warehouse is located on premise, but data can also be consolidated using a cloud-based SaaS offering. Seattle s data.seattle.gov is such a hosted solution. Cloudbased solutions are gaining ground Leveraging the Data Warehouse in the government sector in large part because of their cost efficiencies. They allow organizations to leverage top-of-the-line infrastructure and 24/7/365 support and service that may otherwise be out of reach. The vendor-hosted cloud model eliminates the expenditures associated with buying, maintaining and upgrading infrastructure, software licensing and updating. Services are typically available on a subscription or pay-as-you-go basis. One way to transform data into a functional management tool is to aggregate it into a data warehouse capable of relating organizational data as a whole. A data warehouse can link and combine information from separate agencies. Such a design makes the citizen the focal point, surrounded by the services he or she uses. Business intelligence and analytics can look across data sets and produce insights on individual citizens to identify where people are falling through society s social safety nets. For the past two years, the state of Michigan has been involved in an initiative to ensure child safety. The State Court Administrative Office and the Michigan Department of Human Services have started sharing information compiled from the state s data warehouse in cases involving abuse, neglect, foster care and adoption. The next step in the program is to integrate Medicaid data to allow analysts to monitor the quality of health care and determine courses of care. From late 2008 through August of 2009, the state increased family reunifications by 34 percent among temporary court wards (TCW). This is a group of children who were identified in a Michigan children s rights lawsuit as having remained in the system for one year or longer. By analyzing the broader data, states may be able to more effectively identify patterns that show where programs work and where they are ineffective, thus improving services and saving money. See The People-Centered Universe: Fresh Thinking on Government IT Modernization, Centered-Universe-Fresh-Thinking-on-Government-IT-Modernization.html. PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT 19

20 Future Trends in Data Analytics & Dashboards Big Data growth Big Data is here to stay. It s not going to get smaller, it s certainly not going away and it needs to be managed. At the same time, economic challenges are creating a near-crisis situation, which can be addressed by effectively mining Big Data for solutions and operational efficiencies. If they aren t already, governments must think about how to address the continued growth of data in the enterprise. Technology adoption Citizens and other data users want multiple channels for communication and information delivery. Constituents want to receive information and provide feedback about services via social media services. Data from social media can provide a wealth of information about user opinions. Social media analytics, text analytics and sentiment analysis enable organizations to analyze social media data and extract actionable insight about their audiences to improve services. Mobility will also impact government data. End users will want to access government data via smartphones and other mobile devices, and agencies will need to invest in mobile application development. In addition, the growth of mobile devices is one of the primary drivers of the explosion of Big Data. Because the public increasingly wants mobile access to services, mobile devices will become a larger source of access data about citizens. Finally, the future is cloudy. Cloud computing will continue to increase in importance and be adopted across all government sectors; IT management must evaluate the merits and risks of cloud-based analytics platforms and solutions as it considers eventual cloud migration. Transparency imperative Transparency will become an imperative as the Government Performance Results Act Modernization Act of 2010 (GPRAMA), recently signed into law, drives the use of data-driven performance management and dashboards in the federal sector. The Obama Administration championed GPRAMA to update the 1993 Government Performance Results Act, which mandated the creation of multi-year strategic plans, and annual performance plans and reports. GPRAMA requires more frequent (quarterly) reporting and reviews, increases the types of data that must be reported, and emphasizes the importance of data in making decisions and evaluating agency performance. As federal agencies are required to report even more types of data, GPRAMA could lead to more use of independent evaluators and therefore more objective benchmarks, as practiced by the private sector. 20 PUBLIC CIO SPECIAL REPORT