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Community dashboards: An effective way to inform and engage with citizens

Public information portals are being used to increase the accountability and transparency of government agencies.

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Quantumrun Foresight
October 11, 2022

Insight summary

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increasing push for government transparency. Citizens are interested in easy access to valuable information that may help improve civic engagement and public trust. Blockchain technology might be used to enable secure and transparent community dashboards on everything from water quality to city budgets.

Community dashboards context

Publishing official data through public portals allows governments to effectively communicate important national and global issues to their citizens. These portals often include a community-tailored dashboard, a web application featuring interactive data visualizations that are specific to a particular municipality or region. This approach helps keep residents informed about their community's progress, strengths, and weaknesses.

The practice of using community dashboards gained significant traction during the pandemic. During this period, accurate information about the virus's spread and death rates was in high demand. Websites like ourworldindata.org/coronavirus, covid19stats.live, and ncov2019.live emerged as primary sources for millions seeking real-time updates. These portals were crucial for individuals seeking to understand the measures taken by governments and scientific communities to control the virus.

These dashboards also played a vital role in supporting researchers. They provided timely and relevant information to various stakeholders, including national health departments. By offering accessible and up-to-date data, these platforms enabled researchers to analyze trends, assess the effectiveness of interventions, and make informed recommendations.

Disruptive impact

Communities are also experimenting with these dashboards for other applications besides COVID-19 and public safety-related concerns. In February 2022, the Indiana State Board of Education released a sneak preview of its new dashboard. The goal is to inform the state’s public K-12 schools in five key areas: academic mastery, career and postsecondary experiences and credentials, collaboration and communication skills, work ethic, and digital, financial, and civic literacy. Officials said these indicators would be designed to give a brief, all-inclusive understanding of how well a school prepares students post-high school.

Meanwhile, the North Carolina city of Asheville launched its Point in Time (PIT) Count Dashboard. The dashboard shows data on homelessness in the city broken down by sheltered status and race. Visitors to the webpage can explore further and navigate to a spreadsheet where the data is broken down by gender, ethnicity, and veteran status.

The data is aggregated, and any identifying information is removed before the results are submitted to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. As more people access public information, more organizations will be able to monitor these portals to ensure better accuracy. And while the idea of government spying on its citizens is commonplace, individuals monitoring their governments is a novel paradigm of accountability.

Implications of community dashboards

Wider implications of community dashboards may include:

Blockchain being used to establish community portals where citizens can scrutinize tamper-resistant budgets, construction, and other public services.
Smart city dashboards where citizens are informed on digital initiatives and other metrics, such as air quality and traffic.
Companies releasing their sustainability dashboards to give stakeholders real-time information on their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives.
Biobanks creating public information portals to increase transparency on their DNA drives and reduce genetics research bias.
Community dashboards being continually used to update people on various pandemics, including vaccination rates per city to promote vaccine drives.
Local governments using community dashboards to display real-time public transportation data, leading to improved urban mobility and reduced traffic congestion.
Educational institutions adopting dashboards to share performance metrics, enhancing parental engagement and student accountability in academic progress.
Retail businesses integrating dashboards to showcase supply chain transparency, fostering consumer confidence and brand loyalty through increased awareness of product origins and ethical practices.