There is a lot of information that councils want to and often must provide to the public. Websites are a great way for making that information available, but when it comes to ‘raw data’, it is often hard to know how to present it in accessible and meaningful ways.
Large ‘static’ PDF documents containing pages and pages of budget data and performance statistics make for pretty dry reading. They contain lots of information, but they do not readily provide answers to people’s specific questions. The data is there but there is no easy way for people to explore it themselves.
This leads to misinterpretation, frustration and missed opportunities for councils to communicate good news stories that are lost in endless rows and columns of numbers.
It is said that a picture paints a thousand words and this is particularly true when it comes to understanding and exploring data.
Recently, Tableau Software – a rapidly emerging leader in data analytics and visualisation – released a new free version of its product called Tableau Public (see www.tableausoftware.com/public/). With this product, Tableau’s vision is to do for ‘data’ what Google has done with ‘text’ and YouTube has done with ‘video’.
It’s all about providing a window into a rich source of information and empowering end users to explore it.
Media outlets in Australia are embracing this potential to help online readers create customised views of complex public data sources, such as hospital performance data. In this case, interactive Tableau ‘visualisations’ are embedded into websites alongside articles discussing health services.
Informed by this editorial context, readers are able to rapidly zero in on and better understand data on specific services at specific hospitals of interest to them.
Why not take a few minutes out to have a look at the Tableau Public website and see for yourself what others are doing. There are a myriad of ways that this approach could transform the way that you provide public access to your council’s information.
For further information contact Markus Nolle at Inventri on 0414 602 298 or email him at markus.nolle@inventri.com
*Copy supplied by Inventri
