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EDD unveils interactive economic performance dashboard; shows veteran-owned firms and sustainable energy GDP

3522284 · May 27, 2025

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Summary

The Economic Development Department showed an interactive public dashboard (sa.gov/edd/performancedashboard) highlighting business ownership demographics (about 10% veteran-owned businesses) and industry metrics including sustainable energy's $11 billion GDP contribution and roughly 30,000 jobs.

Benjamin Lisiewicz, research and intelligence manager in the Economic Development Department (EDD), demonstrated the department's economic performance dashboard and said the tool is intended to make complex data transparent and actionable.

Lisiewicz walked the committee through sample queries: ownership demographics (gender, race, Hispanic ownership, veteran status) and strategic-industry cluster metrics. Using U.S. Census and other sources, staff showed veteran-owned firms represent about 10% of businesses in San Antonio and said that aligns with the local veteran share of the labor force (around 8%).

On strategic industries, Lisiewicz used the dashboard to illustrate the sustainable energy cluster. He said San Antonio has roughly 1,000 businesses classified in that cluster, about 30,000 estimated employees, and an industry gross domestic product contribution the presenter reported as $11,000,000,000, representing more than 6% of the region's GDP in the dashboard data.

Lisiewicz said the dashboard splits data into six buckets (EDD outcomes, SABETA, loans and incentives performance, benchmarking, business data and peer-city comparisons) and provides source citations on each page. He noted different data fields refresh on different cadences (some annually via the U.S. Census, some monthly).

Council members praised the dashboard's functionality and asked about update cadence, links to partner dashboards and potential aesthetic improvements for public-facing appeal. Lisiewicz said EDD staff maintain and update the dashboard in-house; update frequency depends on the underlying data source. Members recommended making the splash page more engaging and linking other departmental dashboards into a central entry point.