
Boston's Basic City Services Dashboard - danso
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/03/20/technology-longer-stranger-mayor-office/xPOOOy6Gnpc1xQlMq2XWAK/story.html
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samkline
Boston's neighbor, Somerville, has taken this a step further and made it all
public:
[http://www.somervillema.gov/dashboard/index.html](http://www.somervillema.gov/dashboard/index.html)

~~~
6cxs2hd6
Although that doesn't seem to be the same thing as a "realtime" dashboard,
that is an amazingly well-done site.

20 years ago it had the not-entirely-undeserved nickname Slummerville. It's
remarkable how much it's changed.

~~~
markc
The city site isn't bad either -
[http://www.somervillema.gov/](http://www.somervillema.gov/)

Yeah, 20 years ago I wouldn't have considered a move here. Been here since
August last year and we really love it. The city "works" with effective city
services (call 311 for _anything_ ) an open planning process, social media
communication channels, and a coherent vision for future development. If the
city has a major challenge right now it's gentrification. The city has become
almost too popular - and the influx has been driving up housing costs
dramatically. The typical home purchase is a brutal bidding war. But for those
of us already here, it's great.

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bernardom
The really cool thing, IMO, is the City of Boston app. You can report
anything- grafitti, potholes, "can we plant a tree here please," and of course
"the neighbor is leaving the trash out/marking a parking spot with a
barrel/smells."

The cool thing is that the reports are all public and you can follow up on
yours until they respond.

From a city manager's perspective, this must be terrifying- if more reports
come in than you can handle. If you CAN handle the volume, though, it's pretty
awesome.

~~~
hallman76
It's my understanding that it's a blessing to city managers - they can't fix
potholes they don't know about! :)

If they have a consistent backlog then they can make the case for more
resources.

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snorkel

      { 
      "Potholes filled": 
       {
        "total": 383,
        "one same street": 287,
        "near the mayors house": 287,
        "near campaign donors houses": 32
       }
       }

~~~
ghc
I know you're probably joking, but you're wrong about that. The Mayor's office
of New Urban Mechanics (the most startup-like government office I've ever
talked to), under the previous mayor, developed an app called Citizens'
Connect, which allows citizens to quickly report and get the city to fix urban
problems. In the case of potholes, it doesn't even necessarily require direct
reporting, as at least one version of the pothole reporting app can use your
phone's accelerometer to automatically report potholes as you drive.

Reference: [http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-23/potholes-
the...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-23/potholes-theres-an-
app-for-that)

------
danso
I know these particular dashboards aren't real-time, but I'm still reminded of
Dan Mckinley's, "Whom the Gods Would Destroy, They First Give Real-time
Analytics"

[http://mcfunley.com/whom-the-gods-would-destroy-they-
first-g...](http://mcfunley.com/whom-the-gods-would-destroy-they-first-give-
real-time-analytics)

> _Real-time web analytics is a seductive concept. It appeals to our desire
> for instant gratification. But the truth is that there are very few product
> decisions that can be made in real time, if there are any at all. Analysis
> is difficult enough already, without attempting to do it at speed._

In this case, the lack of context isn't just from not having a ready-
comparison across timeframes...but what does it mean when "Graffiti Removed"
peaks two weeks ago, and then flattens to a low as of today? Is it because
sanitation crews aren't working as hard? Or is it because they've been working
so hard -- and so have the cops -- that there's now much less graffiti to
clean up?

Even with the sparse data here, I feel that there's a risk of a kind of "data
overload"...in that nearly all of the data here is irrelevant without
context...is it really more efficient for the mayor to glance at the dashboard
every once in awhile and reflexively shout to his aides, "WTF is up with our
potholes, check it out!"

~~~
user24
> .but what does it mean when "Graffiti Removed" peaks two weeks ago, and then
> flattens to a low as of today?

Without data, you wouldn't have asked that question, and you wouldn't have got
an answer.

Analytics doesn't give answers, it gives questions.

------
knowtheory
The way this article is written makes way more sense if you imagine the author
were a time traveler not of our era.

~~~
Dirlewanger
Remember that newspapers have to write at a ~2nd grade level because the
general public is stupid.

~~~
aestra
Any evidence newspapers write at a second grade level? I seriously doubt this.

That being said, there is an effort in politics to "dumb down" speeches in the
last few years to reach a bigger audience. They still speak at high school
level though.

[http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/01/state-of-the-
unio...](http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/01/state-of-the-union-
registers-at-th-grade-reading-level-112236.html)

>Obama's use of simple language is in part a reflection of his audience: the
American voter in an election year. And it's part of a larger trend in simpler
State of the Union language as the speech as transitioned from a simple
address to Congress into a prime-time televised event.

[http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/21/study-
congre...](http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/21/study-
congressional-speaking-levels-move-back-a-grade/)

>A new study by the Sunlight Foundation found that Congress speaks at an
average grade level of 10.6, equivalent to a sophomore in high school. That
number is down from 2005, when Congress' 11.5 speaking level was in line with
a high school junior.

>"We do it on purpose," Mulvaney said of himself and his other freshman
Republicans. "People have been teaching this for decades. If you want someone
to understand your message, you speak clearly and concisely."

EDIT: I went to the New York Times homepage and picked the first article I
saw. It was this:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/22/world/europe/ukraine.html?...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/22/world/europe/ukraine.html?hp&_r=0)
I than ran it though a readability score analysis: [https://readability-
score.com/](https://readability-score.com/) It was written about at an 11th
grade level.

~~~
Dirlewanger
I'm spouting a factoid heard long ago, maybe it's a 5th or 6th grade, I don't
know. Regardless, it's _not_ at a college level.

Besides, you're quoting stuff about Congress/State of the Union, not
newspapers. Similar audiences, but different things with different goals.

~~~
nakedrobot2
I've heard this so many times. With this logic, Ernest Hemingway writes at a
2nd grade level.

~~~
Dirlewanger
Yeah, sure, that's true. Doesn't mean it's wrong when talking about
newspapers. They're different bodies of work. Journalists generally aren't
writing narratives laden with literary themes.

------
BryanB55
I feel like I've seen dashboards become more and more popular lately. I've
been meaning to set one up for my company for a while now but never got around
to it because of the difficulty of getting it setup right and finding the
right metrics (even when using the popular services such as geckoboard,
leftronic, etc..)

Who here uses a real time business dashboard? Why or why not? Any problems
you've experienced with it?

~~~
showerst
I've tried a number of them, the biggest issues are always service integration
and keeping a history.

Having one dashboard that integrates all of our different analytics, business,
and project management systems and keeps a decent history is really tough.

[http://www.geckoboard.com/widget-directory](http://www.geckoboard.com/widget-
directory) is really cool if you don't need to go back in time.

I always end up building manual solutions and storing the data in a middle-man
database like mysql. I have high hopes for ElasticSearch + Kibana as a better
middleman and dashboarding system.

~~~
BryanB55
Have you given cyfe.com a try? Looks like they mention "historical data" where
they archive your data history.

~~~
showerst
Nope, thanks for the tip, this looks promising!

------
biesnecker
I want to, with all my soul, leave a snarky comment about Boston bravely
entering the early 2000s, but more than anything I'm saddened that decision
makers whose choices impact the lives of millions don't have easy access to
the sort of data visualizations that a soon-to-fail social media startup has
up on monitors on Day 3.

~~~
teaman2000
Boston's previous mayor, for 20 years, didn't even allow voicemail on phones
at City Hall. But he did fund an office that build the Citizens Connect app
and made great strides in freeing up public data. It's a refreshing change to
have a mayor who will now look at the data.

------
acomjean
Its a good idea, but man could they have made the dashboard look a little
nicer, maybe bigger graphs?

------
jcromartie
These are some lousy metrics to run a city by. It indicates how _much_ they
are doing, but not how effective they are. These metrics are glorifying the
work the city does, rather than striving for a better city.

The best metrics are the ones where _zero_ is the goal. Imagine, instead, if
the dashboard showed:

* open potholes

* streetlights out of service

* buildings with graffiti

Then, instead of patting themselves on the back for _doing so much_ , they
might have an actual goal.

~~~
bduerst
You can't report on data that doesn't exist.

Do they have a take on the three points you listed above? I know they have an
app for reporting pot holes, but how complete is the data?

At least they can monitor performance over time, and start asking questions
like:

> If more pot holes are being filled now, is it because of an increase in
> performance or because we have more deteriorating roads?

------
eli
DC has had something like this for a few years. See e.g.
[http://track.dc.gov/Agency/KA0](http://track.dc.gov/Agency/KA0) for dashboard
and [http://data.dc.gov/](http://data.dc.gov/) for a massive list of available
datasets.

------
jamesrom
It looks like they based the design on a napkin the mayor drew on to explain
what he wanted.

~~~
swalsh
funny enough though, its probably equally effective.

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wil421
Can someone at least style the dashboard?

Does the Mayor really only care about street lights, pot holes, and graffiti?

I wonder if my city has something like that. Oh wait the past Mayors of
Atlanta have been corrupt like Bill Campbell who took all the money.

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kawliga
Judging by the article's image, I thought they were going to bash this
"dashboard". I mean... it looks absolutely terrible.

I'd be curious to know how many tax-payer dollars went towards this state-of-
the-art dashboard.

------
RTigger
The city of edmonton has had this for awhile now, and it's publicly available
- [https://dashboard.edmonton.ca/](https://dashboard.edmonton.ca/)

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Jemaclus
It seems to me that the big flaw in this is that if something isn't reported
(deaths, DUIs, truancy, etc), then the Mayor doesn't see it.

    
    
        And while some might find the concentration of information overwhelming,
        Walsh finds it helpful.
    
        “You learn to focus on certain things,” he said.
    

So he's focusing on things that are reported. What about the things that
aren't reported? You can't just focus on things that are reported, you also
have to see the missing pieces and work with those.

Not that this isn't cool... I just wonder what the repercussions of his
"focus" can be...

~~~
Lambdanaut
No matter how much data we give him, we're still going to have this problem.

The only solution is to not give him any data at all, which is ridiculous.

~~~
Jemaclus
I don't think that's the "only" solution. I think another solution would be
getting more data less frequently... A weekly report of everything instead of
an instantaneous report of 10% of things...

I'm really just thinking out loud here. Not criticizing this at all. I think
it's better to have some data than no data, as you pointed out.

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nodata
He's looking at the dashboard wondering why the graphs take up so little
space, and are surrounded by so much whitespace.

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knowuh
Vanity metrics for a mayor?

