Empowering peak performance in Denver
Power BI empowering cities – Part 2
Denver may be known for the Rocky Mountains but there is one peak that operates on the ground floor. The Denver Peak Academy, started in 2012 by Mayor Michael B. Hancock, is charged with training and coaching employees to improve the way government works. “(The Academy) is the innovation and process improvement program for the City and County of Denver,” explained Brian Elms, director, noting the organization helps “deliver services or products faster or with higher quality to our customers—residents and visitors” and enables city and county employees to improve their performance.
Democratizing data
Microsoft Power BI is playing a key role in empowering employees to achieve more through the Peak Academy’s Denver Data Lab, which trains local government analysts in data visualization techniques. Kate May, the Lab’s data scientist, said they’ve trained a little over half of the city’s 300 analysts. By democratizing data through visually rich Power BI dashboards, the City and County of Denver are gaining insights, realizing performance improvements and making better, data-informed decisions, for example:
- The 311 call center’s Power BI report keeps track of citizen calls to request services or report problems.
- A comprehensive report—built by an intern—to study parking in a popular neighborhood, disproved the generally held belief that the 90-minute meter time limit was too short.
- The Budget Office’s macroeconomic indicator report helps predict changes in the business cycle and another report monitors municipal job openings to understand how long positions remain unfilled.
- A report the Forestry team uses tracks the condition of city trees.
- Denver’s Medical Emergency Response team reports on its key performance indicators.
- The Noise Inspection team uses a report to track its investigations.
“The real point of what we’re trying to do is put data in the hands of the people doing the work as opposed to just … executives,” Elms said. The Peak Academy is monitoring its own progress to “innovate, elevate and repeat” through a multipurpose Power BI report that tracks number of people trained, cost savings, individual team member indicators and database errors that need to be corrected.
With 63 percent of Denver’s budget dedicated to employee costs, the Peak Academy is proving its worth, having saved $22 million by building the capacity and capabilities of city and county employees. “The number one asset of any government is employees,” Elms said. “Our challenge is to make employees the best people they can possibly be and deliver the highest quality service.”
Training pays off
May explained that the Data Lab has trained 160 analysts through eight data visualization classes, which began last November. “(Power BI) is something that we can teach people how to use in a very short amount of time,” she said. “We do monthly classes … and people really see the value.” That’s especially true since prior to implementing Power BI, their previous analytics tool required IT to build all dashboards, some of which took six months to a year, by which time many business needs had changed.
The reaction from Denver’s analysts has been positive: “They really like (Power BI). They recognize it can save them a lot of time. They like that it is easier and more straightforward to use than a lot of the other alternatives and that they don’t need to go through some sort of complex purchasing process to get access to it; they can just download the desktop application and work with it.
“I think it’s empowered a lot of analysts to be less afraid of data,” she added. “With Power BI, they can do a lot of things really quickly and get a lot of insights. They see data as a tool … and they can help their departments use it as a resource.”
Elms acknowledged that the Denver Peak Academy’s approach to training employees has evolved over time. “The concept of democratizing techniques and … skills and … the ability to do things on your own, without having to call in an expert … has changed the way that we work,” Elms said, noting that the visualization capabilities in Power BI means that data analysts can “connect multiple different data sources because they have more time … allowing the analysts to work on things at a higher level.”
You can learn more about the Denver Peak Academy by ordering its book, Peak Performance. To join the Academy’s new network of cities using dashboarding for better decision-making, please send an email to Elms. And for another example of how Power BI is empowering cities, please read Part 1 of our series, highlighting how San Jose is changing its data conversation.
