Birmingham Civic Dashboard

What is it?

The Birmingham Civic Dashboard maps, categorises and visualises the contacts - calls, visits, website enquiries and emails - that come in to Birmingham Council every day, through its Customer Relations Management Centre. It was created by Birmingham developers Mudlark in collaboration with Birmingham Council. The aim was to make public, the data relating to what issues people are reporting to the council. The belief was that when looked at in different ways, this data would provide insight into the issues facing both the citizens of Birmingham and the council itself.

The civic dashboard could help the council to identify the themes developing from service requests and the broader issues they illustrate such as graffiti 'hotspots'.



How the idea developed

The idea for the site came through as a response to the Nesta programme Make IT Local, which sought innovative applications for public data sets. The civic dashboard was awarded £30,000 to be prototyped and launched in alpha. The alpha site is still in existence and can be viewed online, but has not been further developed beyond a first prototype after the Nesta investment period. However, it could be used for future development with other councils, or for other applications.