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The efficiency of Boston city services now available at a glance

By adamg on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 1:08pm

City Hall today announced an online dashboard that is supposed to let people know at a glance how efficiently various city services and metrics are being met - for example, stabbings (hey, it's the very first item) are apparently down from where the city expected them to be (yay!), while city traffic-light repair is going slower than it should (boo!).

Neighborhoods: 
Boston
Topics: 
Technology


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Comments

By anon on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 1:19pm.

That's confusing and useless. Mixing together very different things. I don't think stabbings and homicides are services provided by the city.

By anon on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 1:40pm.

Someone at city hall drank too much of the "analytics" Kool-Aid. All we have to do is collect all this data, put it in a dashboard, and then our problems will be solved.

By Neighbor4 on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 2:44pm.

or having the data is one step towards making improvements.

By anon on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 4:11pm.

The BRA and MBTA both keep saying that to no end.

-Get report
-Dislike contents
-Ignore it
-Pay some crony a gazillion dollars for the same report 10 years later when people complain things still are improper
-Repeat

By FootPad on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 2:05pm.

A CityScore of greater than 1
indicates that the City is exceeding specified targets and/or surpassing historical performance levels.

Stabbings (trend) Day = 2.48
Stabbings (trend) Day = 2.21

I would like to hope that the target for these scores is zero and anything greater than zero should be displayed in red.

And the choice to emulate the green monster scoreboard as a design theme is ridonkulous.

By Lecil on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 2:20pm.

Those aren't raw numbers; they're a measurement of meeting goals. Yes, there does need to be more clarity on what the SLAs being measured are, however.

I adore dashboards, and I'm pleased to see this one, but I agree there needs to be better messaging about what the data is actually trying to communicate for those unused to interpreting dashboards.

By FootPad on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 2:34pm.

both the legend and definitions of CityScores. Again, I would like to hope that anything greater than zero for the two categories I posted above should show up in red. I like 'dashboards' too. Trying to map metrics into a single dimension doesn't necessarily make sense.

By downtown-anon on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 2:41pm.

Anything greater than 1 is good. Since it is an indefinite scale I am not sure what the goal should be. But using the scale they have choosen 2 is better than 1.

By anon on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 2:44pm.

These "scores" are useless unless we know what they are based on. The website claims there are more metrics behind the summary numbers but I cant find anything. Clicking on the scoreboard results in a "javascript void" message.

I don't trust the city to measure its own performance. They started showing alleged snowplowing metrics last winter on cityofboston.gov. In my neighborhood, they claimed they were 100% done but that was nonsense. Streets with 2 lanes on each side were only plowed to make room for one lane on each side. But the city called that 100% done. I called City Hall and they said they would bring it to whoever's attention. But the next snow storm I saw the same pretend metrics measuring only partial snow removal as 100% done.

It took 3 years (yes 3 years) and several phone calls to remove a diseased tree on my street. The tree was dropping large branches on the sidewalk and in one case on a car. So what was "normal" response time? Was 3 years supposed to be normal or better or worse than normal?

By anon on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 3:58pm.

At a Fortune 500 corporation as I helped my boss with her presentation to the "leadership team". I said "these numbers are misleading at best and downright wrong in some cases" . She said "that's alright, that's what they want"

By ckollett on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 1:21pm.

It's supposed to be a major priority, right?

By Neighbor4 on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 2:45pm.

By this, I assume @ckollett means a count of how many idiots jay-walk in front of cars on a given day while looking down at their phones?

Pedestrian safety score, please

By anon on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 3:05pm.

No, not everyone who gets hit by a car is looking at their phone or even jay-walking. Pedestrians make just as many stupid moves as cyclists and motorists, no need to single any group out

By spin_o_rama on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 3:32pm.

Can we get a count of how many idiots are driving on a given day while looking down at their phones?

By FootPad on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 4:48pm.

The number would be too large - it won't fit on the dashboard.

By ckollett on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 4:17pm.

Especially given recent news.

Pedestrian was in a crosswalk

Driver arrested

By Saul on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 1:42pm.

Why is the entire data table saved as an image? Not only does it violate any good standard of web design, it probably also violates the ADA in not being accessible to visually impaired viewers.

By anon on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 6:43pm.

Good point. The blind, and some visually impaired people use a screen reader to access websites. An image is only usable for the blind if there is some metadata attached to the image that can tell the screen reader what to read out loud. For this image, the alt tag is img01, which basically means that the whole webpage is useless for the blind.

By Felicity on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 1:42pm.

It's totally gross to depict violent crime stats on a cutsie faux scoreboard. Plus, the font is awful!

By teric on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 1:49pm.

snow shoveling...

By anon on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 2:05pm.

How is this different from the city was already doing? Every couple of years they announce some new report card format.

By adamg on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 3:38pm.

I'd like to see a score for the number of Dunkin' Donuts within a block of another Dunkin' Donuts myself, but others?

By anon on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 4:59pm.

# of 'Irish' pubs per capita?
# nail salons per capita?
# bank branches closed 75% of the time per capita?
# investment owned condos vacant/airbnb'ing it per capita?

By theszak on Fri, 01/15/2016 - 7:27pm.

CHART/TABLE of Roll Call Votes during Public Meetings of Boston City Council from the data at
http://www.cityofboston.gov/cityclerk/rollcall/

Roll Call Votes during Public Meetings of Cambridge City Council, some of the data at
https://www.google.com/search?q=roll+call+vote+2015+site%3Acambridgema.gov