New, User-Friendly Dynamic Mayor’s Management Report (DMMR) Provides Publicly Accessible Data to Easily Track City Agency Performance
New York City Mayor’s Office of Operations (Ops) is a charter that works with City agencies to collect and report data that aid in assessing agency performance. Every year they release the Mayor’s Management Report, made up of hundreds of pages of data from each agency. Ops sought to create a user-friendly platform that would make performance data more accessible and easier to understand for City agencies, elected officials, media, and the general public. To satisfy the objectives laid out by Ops, the platform needed to be able to handle thousands of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from over 50 agencies, going back more than 20 years.
Challenges
- With over 20 years of data from 2500 KPIs of 55+ Agencies, maintaining accuracy was the top priority.
- Simplify the experience for users to understand the Agencies’ performance metrics
- Implement and pass the latest data security standards and policies set forth by NYC.
Simplified User Experience
The Mayor’s Management Report is composed of hundreds of pages of data from each agency with descriptions on their achievements, goals and objectives. Transforming the data to be made available online was a task that required mental modeling of following targeted audiences:
- New York City Residents
- Media and Advocacy Group
- Employees of City Agencies
- City Council & City Hall Leadership
HDMade, the design partner and Practical Logix, analyzed Ops team’s current workflows and gained an understanding of their prospective requirements, features, and user profiles. We conducted interviews with key stakeholders, prospective end-users, and agency liaisons. Our team also performed a comparative analysis of similar platforms utilized by other government entities and created a system to assign weighted scores based on relevant features and benefits. The result was a simplified user experience that would let the audience view, analyze and compare data and download them using online tools.
Data Analysis and Optimization
- 7 City Services
- Over 25 Years of Data
- 50+ Participating Agencies
- More than 2500 Key Performance Indicators
Practical Logix team helped the Ops team to analyze, triage, and standardize the data from their original sources for the new platform. The platform supports a data intake process that enforces checks for accuracy and data integrity. The data is then stored to be made available via the backend CMS as well as the frontend application via APIs. Advanced caching mechanisms are in place to ensure the speed of the website is not affected by data size.
Geo-Representation
The team at Practical Logix implemented the capability in DMMR to represent the geographic characteristic of the KPIs using Choropleth (statistical thematic map). Users are able to view data from different years on the map and understand the performance of an Agency in any particular borough or sub burough. Practical Logix leveraged MapBox for cartography to create the base map that met the design standards of the application. The overlay polygons of boroughs and sub boroughs were consumed from existing open data initiatives available from NYC using ArcGIS layers and services.
Headless Architecture with Security at the Forefront
Due to the quantity of data that required to be stored as well as represented in a user-friendly manner, Practical Logix implemented the system with the “Headless CMS” architecture. It acts as a content repository that can organize data and editorial/navigational content and make them available to the frontend in the form of REST or GQL API. The term “Headless” means the developer is free to use any frontend framework to work with the CMS.The front-end is not tightly coupled to the content in the CMS. Advantages include better data import and enrichment support, rapid design iterations and execution, enhanced security, tremendous SEO advantages, simpler deployments, easier third-party integrations.
Support and Maintenance
DMMR is a platform that is evolving with the needs of Agencies, Ops team as well as the data that flows into it. Hence, Practical Logix helps NYC to maintain the infrastructure, code and processes in a timely manner. Support and Maintenance efforts are structured based on a workflow that allows us to proactively avert crisis as well as rapidly respond to problems as they arise.
Outcomes
With the help of Practical Logix and HDMade, DMMR platform evolved to be a comprehensive platform to analyze performance indicators of Agencies. With a multitude of features the platform stands out from the comparable applications from other similar cities in the US. Other benefits include:
Transparency
The Ops team can easily list and describe the broad range of services offered across the City. They can also list the agencies that are responsible for performing each service. Moreover, agencies clearly state their missions and provide details regarding their performance and reporting workflows.
Accountability
The Ops team can feature all the agency KPIs that are used to track agencies’ performance based on accurate monthly, quarterly, or yearly data.
Connection
Ops can easily share information about special events, milestones, and initiatives.
Visibility
Residents, media, advocacy groups, and public officials can view and analyze City data spanning over 20 years and over 2500 KPIs. Users can easily download data and use it for a broad range of purposes.
