Deputy City Manager Mike Morris told the Prescott City Council on Oct. 14 that all city departments have identified performance measures and that staff plan to publish department-level dashboards through OpenGov, including trend lines, bar charts and narrative explanations.

Why it matters: The dashboards are intended to increase transparency and let the public and council track performance measures and how budget decisions affect levels of service.

What staff said: Morris said the city will produce department dashboards and a strategic-plan dashboard and hopes to have them live by January, noting that OpenGov was used for the capital budget and procurement components. "We are now working on creating a dashboard through OpenGov for each department, where you'll not only have the raw data, but you will also have bar graphs and line graphs and trend lines and some narrative to explain what those are," he said.

Council questions and public access: Council members asked whether the public is using OpenGov and how usage could increase. Morris said operating-budget content and the forthcoming performance measures should drive more public engagement and that staff can provide user statistics upon request.

Ending: Staff said they will continue building levels-of-service definitions (for example, police and fire response times) so future budget requests can be evaluated by their impact on measurable service levels.