The first governmental ‘dashboard’ I saw was that for the
State of Michigan. When Governor Rick
Snyder took office in 2011, he was a businessman with no prior political
experience, but a lot of leadership skills and business sense. He referred to himself, and is still known as
“one tough nerd.” Among other things, he
directed the use of a dashboard to give Michigan residents a way to check Michigan’s
performance and progress quickly and visually.
But Governor Snyder and Michigan were not the first to
use a government web site dashboard.
That was actually President Barack Obama. In February 2009, just a month after his
inauguration, the first dashboard went up to provide some transparency for the
stimulus funds of that year’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. See the U.S.A. dashboard here. The current Michiganversion is more comprehensive than the original and actually there are now
numerous dashboards for things like Education, Seniors, Health & Wellness,
Financial Health, Safety, etc.
Since then, Livingston County has also established adashboard for residents, too.
This tool was used in business as far back as the 1980’s,
although not the internet-type we see today.
Dashboards can provide great visuals that are easy to understand, but
they are dependent on the use of quality, and often standardized data. The concept has evolved since then and many
sites offer the opportunity to download raw data in spreadsheet and other
formats for further analysis.
If you’ve never seen a dashboard, it’s worth a quick
look. Links have been provided as
appropriate throughout this article.
Images courtesy of State of Michigan
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