WIGs!

Government data dashboards

I hope to post every day this week, as usual, but may be late or miss a day. I will be in LA for most of the week – my son is graduating from USC, so lots of activities there.

Denverite has a nice article about Mayor Johnston’s dashboard of Denver city efforts.

A 2011 report by Sukumar Ganapti, for the IBM Center for the Business of Government, highlighted the then emerging use of dashboard by governments. It was a new way to make goals clear and to allow citizens to have some data to hold public officials accountable to those goals. The idea is to stick to a handlful of goals, to show and focus upon priorities, and not to overwhelm with too much data.

Then Colorado Governor Hickenlooper pushed this idea forward, in 2016, under the specific efforts of LG Donna Lynne and David Padrino. Governor Polis continued this effort, which flowed somewhat naturally from his first campaign’s focused efforts on early childhood education, lowering health care costs, and a tougher renewable energy portfolio.

Colorado has won national awards, from groups like Results for America, from this dashboard work. Todd Ely, Will Swann and I assessed this work in a report in 2019.

With the state Governors’ efforts, the trend at the time was to focus upon Wildly Important Goals (WIGs). To identify just a few of them, and to make some bold aspirational goals that would move the needle for the state, and be beyond just normal incremental improvements. Identifying WIGs can lead to too much focus on a handful of issues, leaving others dangling, but if they truly are the government priorities, that is not bad.

So, now we have Mayor Mike Johnston’s Denver dashboard, with six areas. They specify goals for Denver in the areas of: Vibrant (boosting business), Affordable, Safe, All In Mile High (street homelessness solutions), Climate Resilient and Child Friendly. Progress in each of these domains will be welcome.