InstantAtlas for Performance Reporting and Mapping

InstantAtlas is an inexpensive yet powerful data visualization and presentation tool. It is being used in the UK and internationally by national, regional and local government organisations for performance reporting. It enhances the value of data by making patterns and trends easy to see and explore. No specialist expertise is needed - yet the results can be stunning and highly effective. In technical terms, InstantAtlas dynamic reports are an example of a RIA (Rich Internet application) to deliver an intuitive and rewarding user experience.

The Context to Reporting Performance in Government

Reporting on performance across the government sector has traditionally been an internal process of providing static indicator reports of current state against baselines and targets to senior managers and elected officials. In parallel, there has been an external process of providing reports and data to a central government agency and an auditing body. Content of performance reports has often been driven by the reporting specifications of the central agency – as such the content and style of reports reflects the needs of this audience but rarely those of others.

However in recent years the situation is changing fast. There are increasing pressures on government bodies worldwide to demonstrate the effective use of public resources. There has been a widespread emergence of performance and results-based management approaches with renewed emphasis on results-oriented business planning, accountability and performance reporting. Agencies are now seeing the benefits of implementing these performance management practices.

How have these developments impacted on performance reporting? Internal reporting is becoming more sophisticated with the use of hierarchical scorecards to present a balanced view of performance tailored to different stakeholders. Visual markers and traffic-light colouring are often used to highlight underachievement and exceptions. Externally, public agencies are being actively encouraged to make their performance reports available to a wider citizen community. There are many challenges to this process not least how to present information to users in a way that is engaging, relevant, understandable and useful in the context of expectations that are rapidly becoming more sophisticated.

The context specifically within UK government is covered in more detail below.

Child and Maternity Health Observatory (ChiMat)

The National Child and Maternal Health Observatory (ChiMat) provides information and intelligence to improve decision-making for high quality, cost effective services. The web site provides on-line tools to support different elements of the commissioning process. These tools are brought together into a central hub for access to data, profiles and reports on child and maternal health.

National report for English local authorities for National Indicators of performance (Place Survey 08)

We have worked with a number of customers to develop national and local scale reports using the Place Survey 2008 results. For more information see our dedicated Place Survey page.

Value of Location in Performance Management

The value of utilising location in performance management and reporting is becoming widely recognised. Incorporating location into the way you manage, analyse and deliver performance information allows you to:-

Build up a more comprehensive picture of the performance landscape through the ability to integrate a wide range of relevant information based on a common referencing system - location;
Utilise growing volumes of relevant, geographically referenced statistics, for example geo-demographic classifications of neighborhoods, to improve analysis and reporting;
Understand geographic levels of variation and inequality particularly where there are targets to 'narrow the gap';
Rapidly benchmark areas of interest with its geographic and statistical neighbors;
Identify 'problem hotspots' and target policy and practical interventions more effectively;
Make performance reports more relevant and useful to area-based managers and elected officials by using localised, recognisable geographic areas; and
Meet the rising expectations of your citizen audience by making reports more personalised and useful to citizens.

InstantAtlas Examples - click on images to load

NHS Community Health Profiles, England (Live)	Home Office Crime Figures, England & Wales (Live)

Scale: National (England) Purpose:Health Profiles provide a snapshot of health for each local council in England using a set of key health indicators, which enables comparison locally, regionally and over time. InstantAtlas Template: Performance Analysis	Scale: National (England & Wales) Purpose: To provide a national, annually updated report of recorded crime patterns and trends for England and Wales aimed at external users like citizens, community groups and journalists. InstantAtlas Template: Single Map
Norfolk Wards: Spatial Performance Dashboard (Demo)	Monitoring impact of 2012 Games: London Boroughs Demo (Demo)
See also District level example
Scale: Local Purpose: To provide a internal 'performance profile' report of a key set of performance outcomes against baselines and targets. Ability to set targets, monitor progress and understand spatial and temporal variation at small area level. InstantAtlas Template: Performance Analysis	Scale: Regional / Metropolitan City Purpose: To provide a 'performance profile' report of 2012 Olympic KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for London Boroughs to show variations and highlight trends. InstantAtlas Template: Performance Analysis
NIS Scorecard for a Local Authority (Demo)	East of England Regional Assembly, Annual Monitoring Report (Live)

Scale: Local Purpose: To demonstrate the flexibility of the Performance Analysis template to present data for a single geographic area. Currently in many cases performance data is not available at geographically disaggregated areas (although this is changing). This interactive report presents a subset of the England NIS (National Indicator Set) deemed to be high priority by a local authority allowing internal managers to monitor progress easily and visually. InstantAtlas Template: Performance Analysis	Scale: Regional Purpose: An interactive, online performance monitoring tool to complement the static annual Annual Monitoring Report (AMR). The tool delivers a large volume of time series data for the region presented on a single page to highlight progress at a local authority level towards the performance objectives set out in the Regional Spatial Strategy. InstantAtlas Template: Single Map
Yorkshire & Humber - Progress in the Region (Live)	Cambridgeshire County Council, Place Survey 2008 (Live)

Scale: Regional Purpose: An interactive, online performance monitoring tool to complement the static annual 'Progress in the Region' report. This takes a set of key performance indicators and tracks them on an annual basis. This report, made available online, presents all the data visually on one page allowing users to explore it easily themselves. InstantAtlas Template: Single Map	Scale: Local Purpose: A questionnaire was sent out to a random sample across Cambridgeshire county and 5,925 responses were returned. The results helped identify which services citizens felt were performing well and those that needed improvement, as well as the priorities for the services that are being provided. The Cambridgeshire atlas shows Place Survey data at a ward level across the county. It includes all 18 of the national indicators measured in the Place Survey. InstantAtlas Template: Single Map
Cornwall - public reporting of crime (Live)	Performance of local authorities, England (Demo)
Alternative demo versions: (1) Profile + larger map or (2) Large Map
Scale: Local Purpose: To provide a profile report of multiple types of recorded crime to show patterns and trends for all wards in Cornwall. It is aimed at staff within the local crime reduction partnership and external citizens. InstantAtlas Template: Performance Analysis	Scale: National Purpose:To demonstrate the interactive presentation of audited performance results for top tier English local authorities. The 'traffic-light' RAG map presents Audit Commission's latest results of their Comprehensive Performance Assessment (2005 to 2008). InstantAtlas Template: Single Map

Many of the examples above are based on our InstantAtlas Performance Analysis Template. This is part of our Area Profile Family of templates. It provides a cross-sectional view across a defined set of Performance Indicators (PIs) allowing users to select an area of interest and view the performance profile for the area. It uses graphical presentation techniques recommended by data visualization experts working in the area of performance dashboards. The template is highly flexible in terms of presentation styles and can be tailored for different requirements and audiences. You can include targets and benchmarks specific to particular areas allowing you to monitor progress depending upon local circumstances.

Links to Area Profiling

The production of area-specific 'profile' reports, a process known as area profiling, has considerable overlap with this type of performance reporting. Area profile reports generally offer a broader intelligence context to performance while performance reports tend to focus specifically on a defined set of PIs showing progress against baselines and targets. However, in the UK, the shift away from monitoring organisational inputs and outputs towards a focus on outcomes has brought these two reporting functions closer together. Performance profiles now share a great deal in common with area profiles.

Context of Performance Reporting in UK government

Central government in the UK remains committed to public service reform and a key element of their strategy is the introduction of a new set of performance frameworks. Performance reporting is central to these frameworks both in terms of making high quality information more easily accessible leading to a stronger evidence-based approach to decision-making and also using performance information to empower communities.

The organisational performance of public sector organisations is now starting to drive internal policy and practice rather than, traditionally, supporting the external reporting needs of central government. Alongside this is the significant shift away from performance inputs and outputs towards measuring outcomes – the actual and perceived impact that an organisation is having on its local communities. This has a strong locality focus, sometimes referred to as ‘place shaping’.

This major shift in emphasis brings a growing awareness of the need to understand geographic variability within a territory of governance. No longer is it sufficient to measure and report many performance measures at the level of the organisation.

To effectively guide local decision making you need to be aware, for example, of under-performing ‘hotspots’ which require targeted, localised solutions.
A focus on organisation level PIs may also hide intra-area variation - the actual value of a PI for the organisation may remain fairly constant, but significant changes in one area may be offset by equally significant reverse changes in another area.
Top-down target setting could lead to unrealistic expectations – a bottom-up approach that estimated potential impacts of policy and practise at a localised level, then aggregated this to the level of the organisation could lead to more realistic organisational targets.

The requirements for internal performance reporting are becoming ever more tightly linked to ‘place’. The geographic dimension of information acts as a common referencing system, the ‘informational glue’, by which it can be joined-up and presented coherently.

Externally, UK public bodies have a statutory duty to report their performance publicly. Yet, to date, the way this information has been reported has not made it easily accessible. Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently described the reform of public services being underpinned by 'an information revolution' (foreword from Working Together - Public Services on Your Side, UK Cabinet Office, March 2009). “..government has been too slow to make use of the enormous democratising power of information. When we give people knowledge about their public services, we give them power to shape and even transform them.” This paper follows an independent Power of Information Task Force that published an internationally recognised report in February 2009 on the value of opening up the information environment.

The same Cabinet Office paper comments (page 11):

For citizens this means..

Personalised services which fit around people’s lives and needs…and it will be backed by clear information about the performance of local services so that people can see clearly whether those entitlements are being met;
An information revolution, designed to put the power of information within easy reach so that people can exercise control and shape their services. This includes open-source, real-time data on the performance of services. It also means having the ability to feed back to services and share comments with other patients, parents and local residents.

It also suggests that technology offers a useful platform to support this ‘revolution’ and that information should be delivered in a way that does not require citizens to be expert analysts: "Technology allows for innovative ways to do things. Information can be shared and good ideas can spread. People don't need to be experts to understand."

Performance Reporting Resources: Useful Documents and Web Links


Performance Analysis Template \| PDF or HTML Version	Typical Excel Performance Data Manager file (Excel Spreadsheet)	BURISA Sept 07: Local Information Systems & Performance Management Systems (9 pages PDF)	Local Information Systems: An Overview Guide (5 pages PDF)

UK National Audit Office: Choosing the right fabric: a framework for performance information
UK IDeA: Reporting Performance
UK IDeA: Performance & Policy Community of Practice
Audit Commission: Building Area Profiles
Audit Commission: In The Know report
Audit Commission: Making Better Use of Information to Drive Improvement in Local Public Services
Audit Commission: The Use of Information in Decision Making - A Literature Review
Audit Commission: Improving information to support decision-making - A framework to support improvement in data quality in the public sector
Audit Commission: Making the numbers work
UK Dept of Communities and Local Government: Community Empowerment
UK Cabinet Office: Working Together - Public Services on Your Side
EURIM: The Value of Information
InstantAtlas: Local Information Systems Online Resource Pack
InstantAtlas: Community Indicators and Community Information Systems Online Resource Pack
InstantAtlas: Crime Reporting and Mapping Online Resource Pack
InstantAtlas: Public Health Reporting and Mapping Online Resource Pack
InstantAtlas: Reporting the results of the Place Survey 2008

InstantAtlas Product Options for Performance Reporting

InstantAtlas is available as both a Desktop or Server product - you can select the solution that best meets your requirements.

Option 1: InstantAtlas Desktop

Option 2: InstantAtlas Server

1. Inexpensive and easy to implement, the solution is in widespread use internationally

2. Simple and quick to create report outputs for live web publication - create as many reports as you like using different geographies at no additional cost

3. Reports are richly interactive, visually appealing and easy to use

4. Minimise IT implications - simply publish a set of static files on your existing web site

5. The solution is designed for analysts to publish and maintain outputs using familiar tools like Microsoft Excel and Access

1. Larger scale server-based solution to support any performance indicators or locality-based statistics

2. Data delivered live from a database with ability to support multiple styles of output including flexible area profiles

3. Can be linked into your existing web site and branded accordingly

4. Complete suite of web-based administration tools to allow multiple administrators to support the application

5. Can be delivered either as packaged software to implement on-site or as a fully managed service (hosted externally)

We have published a set of videos to demonstrate how easy it is to use InstantAtlas Desktop to create richly interactive reports. The video is available from YouTube and the InstantAtlas Blog - for sound you will also need audio support.

View InstantAtlas Desktop Videos

About GeoWise and InstantAtlas

GeoWise develops and sells innovative, award-winning products and solutions that manage and present geography and statistics within web browsers. The GeoWise team has a unique blend of skills in data visualization, software, geography and statistics.

InstantAtlas™ improves the management and communication of location-based statistical data. InstantAtlas enables information analysts, researchers and GIS professionals to create highly-interactive web solutions that combine statistics and map data to improve data visualization, enhance communication, and engage people in more informed decision making.

Keywords of Article and Resource Links | statistics visualization, performance map, mapping performance, performance maps, performance reporting, performance analysis tool, statistical data presentation, statistics visualization, performance dashboards, interactive reporting, performance mapping tools, performance mapping charts, area profiling,performance monitoringsoftware

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