In today's data-driven world, local governments have an immense opportunity to utilise data to enhance operations, inform planning and policy, and elevate service delivery. However, to fully harness the power of data, organisations need to implement tools like Microsoft Power BI as well as cultivate an internal culture of data-driven decision making.
Welcome to the Iamdata Solutions Asset Management Newsletter - 1 January 2024
To kick off 2024, I would like to share with you a guide for implementing Power BI and cultivating a strong data culture. This first post of the year will provide helpful information, insights, and a comprehensive roadmap to aid in the adoption of Power BI and the development of data-driven practices in your organisation.
Let's explore how councils and other local government organisations can design a roadmap that will help them to successfully adopt Power BI into their business ecosystem and cultivate a healthy data culture.
Power BI Scenarios - Which one fits your requirements?
Personal Power BI
Carolyn is an Asset Manager at the council who wants to analyse her team’s planned and reactive maintenance schedules. She creates reports in Power BI Desktop connecting to Excel files she maintains.
With a personal setup, Carolyn has lots of flexibility to analyse her data without impacting others. The main limitations is that Carolyn can't share her reports with other team members, and she can't set up schedule refreshes.
Small Team Power BI
The Planning and Development team wants to analyse their development application data and streamline reporting tasks. Jamie builds a Power BI report connecting to their development application data held within council's property and rating corporate system. Jamie may have to call upon the expertise of the IT department who have knowledge of SQL to ensure the correct data is being pulled into Power BI.
With the on-premises data gateway, scheduled refreshes keep the data current.
Jamie and other team members can create various visualisations and reports in Power BI Desktop connected to the development application dataset. The reports are published to the workspace. Access to the workspace for the team is granted to allow the team to discuss and share insights using the reports and dashboards.
With a team workspace, members can collaborate on analysis while sharing connections to enterprise data sources.
Enterprise Power BI
The CFO wants consistent budgeting and valuation reports for all council assets. The IT department configures a Power BI Premium capacity and builds a shared asset dataset using data from their various corporate systems such as the Asset Management system and Finance system.
Power BI champions within the business can connect to Power BI Desktop to build reports that connect to the shared dataset. The reports are published to their team workspaces. A Power BI app contains dashboards from all regions and is shared widely via Premium licenses.
The Premium capacity and shared dataset provide a scalable enterprise BI solution. Report authors can build on the centralised data model while still meeting specific regional needs.
What are the Benefits of Power BI for Councils?
Power BI is a business intelligence platform that provides interactive data visualisations, augmented analytics using AI, and real-time dashboards and reports.For councils, Power BI can deliver a profound impact by helping to:
1. Streamline and optimise council operations and processes across departments with data insights to inform resource allocation, boost efficiency, and improve workflows.
2. Identify trends and patterns to guide effective policy decisions and planning enabling data-driven governance and community development.
3. Enhance transparency and trust through open data initiatives by making data accessible to residents to promote engagement and oversight.
4. Improve the delivery of public services across the board with data driving continual improvements in education, infrastructure, health and wellness, public safety, sustainability efforts, and much more.
However, the technology alone cannot bring about change. Councils must also instil a data-driven culture within their organisations.
Cultivating an Organisational Data Culture
A data culture refers to the behaviours, processes, and norms within an organisation that encourage leveraging data to inform decisions and drive progress at all levels.
Key aspects include:
Data accessibility
Data must be available and understandable to employees across departments. This requires thoughtful data modelling and visualisation.
Data literacy
Employees should have the skills and knowledge to correctly analyse and interpret data to turn insights into action. Training and mentoring are crucial.
Cross-department data sharing
Insights should be consistently shared between departments, leading to breakdown of silos.
Data-driven decision making
From executive team (usually CEO and Divisional Managers) strategic planning to frontline process improvements, data should guide policy, governance, operations and service delivery.
By championing a data culture, councils can fully capitalise on their Power BI investment and realise transformational outcomes.
Executing the Roadmap for Success
Now that we've outlined the key areas of the Power BI Adoption Roadmap, let's delve into step-by-step recommendations for councils and other local government organisations to successfully adopt Power BI and build a data culture.
Key steps to successfully execute your Power BI implementation roadmap:
1. Define Your Data Culture Vision
Define the vision and goals for data culture based on organisational priorities and target outcomes. For example, a council may want to improve service delivery and resident satisfaction scores by 15% through data-driven decision making. Engage stakeholders early on to get buy-in.
2. Secure an Executive Sponsor
Secure an executive sponsorship ideally from the CEO and Executive Team to convey the vision from the top-down. Identify champions in each department to promote cooperation.
3. Choose a Content Ownership Strategy
Determine the appropriate content ownership models between IT, dedicated analytics teams, and business units. For instance, the police department may wish to manage their own crime statistics content while IT governs the storage infrastructure. Balance centralization for consistency with distributed self-service analytics.
4. Determine Content Delivery Scope
Establish delivery scope starting small, such as within individual departments. Expand organically through teams that demonstrate results, and eventually organisation wide. This gradual rollout allows improving data literacy and governance.
5. Establish a Centre of Excellence (COE)
Form a Centre of Excellence (COE) Team with both technical data engineers and business analysts. Ensure the COE Team has executive backing, resources and authority to set standards and drive adoption.
6. Develop Governance Policies
Create data policies and procedures aligning with laws and ethics while allowing flexibility. For example, usage policies could require anonymising personally identifiable data. Start with minimal policies and expand as usage grows.
7. Implement Mentoring and User Enablement
Launch comprehensive training initiatives including workshops, online modules, mentoring programs, and conferences to develop employee data skills for different roles. Analytics team members can provide ongoing coaching.
8. Foster a Community of Practice
Foster a community of practice through events and digital forums for users to share best practices and assist each other in applying Power BI and analytics within their roles.
9. Provide User Support
Develop help resources including documentation, FAQs, discussion forums, and ticketing systems to support users at all levels as questions arise. Assign team members to monitor forums and respond promptly.
10. Ensure System Oversight
Manage and administer Power BI efficiently including data sources, storage, security, system updates, and monitoring utilisation. Develop protocols and assign responsibilities to different roles.
Realising the Potential of Data
Executing this roadmap will enable councils and any other organisation, to realise the potential of data through Power BI adoption. The journey requires commitment and a clear vision. But the payoff is immense:
optimised operations,
improved decisions,
and most importantly, better services for our residents and communities.
Unlocking the power of data can profoundly enhance how councils’ function in our modern digital world.
Resources
Over the last few years, Microsoft have put a lot of time and resources into developing the Power BI universe. If you’ve been around Power BI for any length of time, you will know that the Power BI landscape always seems to be evolving! To help us stay up with all the advancements, Microsoft has provided comprehensive guidelines, best practices, governance plans, and real-world examples of successfully driving Power BI adoption.
To help you on your way, I’ve listed some recommended articles and resources on Microsoft Power BI adoption roadmaps and strategies:
Microsoft's Guide to Power BI Adoption:
Planning a Power BI Enterprise Deployment:
Planning a Power BI Enterprise Deployment:
These articles directly from Microsoft provide in-depth guidance on successfully adopting Power BI across organisations.
Happy Implementations!
I have worked on many different projects with my Local Government clients, from designing and developing Power BI Reports, to building SQL Server databases for spatial data, to managing and maintaining the GIS and the Asset Management systems. If you'd like to discuss how we might work together, then please email Jill at ➡️ jill.singleton@iamdata.solutions
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