Dashboards and software help simplify financial funding and reporting for cities and counties

Governments are streamlining management of federal funds through technology, says Mike Bell, CEO of Envisio, which provides public dashboards, analytics and performance management software. About 150 local government, education and nonprofit organizations use his firm’s solutions to manage their strategic plans, improve performance and report on results.

Envisio is helping local government agencies to satisfy the U.S. Treasury reporting requirements associated with receiving American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) funds. ARPA is federal legislation to aid public health and economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, providing $1.9 trillion in economic stimulus across the United States. “The technology setup helps support greater trust and transparency in reporting to the public on exactly how ARPA dollars are being spent,” Bell explains.

Bell outlines one feature of his company’s system: “For example, with Envisio’s strategy software, local governments can cascade larger strategic goals or specific programs, down to departmental actions. Public sector agencies can create and track key performance measures at any level of an ARPA plan, including key obligation and expenditure information.” His conclusion: “With all spending and performance data in one place, generating reports for both the U.S. Treasury and the general public is easy and efficient.”

Bell says the process is seamless. “When it’s time to submit reports to the U.S. Treasury, it’s easy to take the centralized data from Envisio and input it into the Treasury’s reporting portal. Performance data can also be reported to communities using our system. By publishing a community dashboard, local governments are not only fulfilling the federal requirement to post the results of their ARPA spending to a public-facing website, but taking a huge step forward in building community trust and transparency around ARPA spending plans and outcomes.”

Bell’s firm offers a blog that features news, research and insights into strategy and performance management. One blog entry covers local governments’ using and managing ARPA funds with the company’s systems. The system’s public dashboards on a public-facing website are interactive and can include both progress updates and performance measures (qualitative and quantitative information). The dashboards help provide a view into a jurisdiction’s ARPA expenditure activity.

In Washington County, Ore., which is part of the Portland metropolitan area, officials are using Envisio’s centralized platform for public transparency and outcomes tracking of ARPA funds. The county is using its once-in-a- generation ARPA funds to advance both community and organizational resilience, says Philip Bransford, communications officer for the county.

Bransford explains: “The county’s ARPA projects are complex and diverse—spanning outbreak response to vaccination to small business support. This made the value of a centralized platform for public transparency and outcomes tracking immediately obvious.”

Bransford says Washington County is handling multiple tasks due to the pandemic and its aftermath: “As the local public health authority, our local government has had an intensive role to play through pandemic response, recovery and resilience phases of community progress. Implementing an easy-to-navigate performance management solution is allowing us to serve diversity of stakeholders—including our elected officials, community leaders and partner governments—with a one-stop shop for ARPA information.”

He adds that the centralized platform in place enables the county to perform several tasks efficiently: “Thanks to Envisio’s intuitive structure, we were able to swiftly mirror the ARPA spending structure adopted by our board in our Envisio webpages and personalize with unique and clear data visualizations.”

Bransford says the technology in place is helping Washington County evolve and improve management practices. “Implementing Envisio as a centralized performance management platform is helping us to grow from being data curious to fully embracing data-informed decision-making. Piloting Envisio with ARPA has served as an important foundation and stepping stone toward modernizing the countywide strategic plan and making local government more resilient ahead of future disasters.”

Bell says the Envisio team has recently seen an increase in the number of its customers who are focused on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) plans and efforts and leveraging tech and dashboards to increase transparency around their organizations’ DEI initiatives. These DEI efforts are often centered on attracting and retaining a diverse workforce that reflects the demographics of the community.

“We’re seeing our customers focus more on transparency and public communication than ever before, with 15 local governments having already launched new public dashboards in Q1 2023—the most in company history for a single quarter,” Bell says. “City leaders in Roseville, Minn., are leveraging a public dashboard to communicate progress made on their strategic racial equity action plan, and those in Sonoma County, Calif., are using a dashboard to track their progress on racial equity and justice.”

Bell adds that the Envisio team sees its customers taking one common initial step as they work to attract and retain a diverse workforce. That step is purpose-drive data collection and analysis. “Intentional analysis of the demographics of current employees and the community can help local governments determine where to focus efforts to promote diversity and equity. Data collection helps local governments set goals, identify barriers and measure progress toward achieving a diverse and inclusive workforce. By intentionally collecting and tracking data on representation by race, gender and other demographic characteristics, local governments can establish benchmarks, track progress, ensure progress is continually being made and communicate that progress.”

Bell explains that in 2023, residents desire—even expect—transparency and proactive communication from their local governments. “Digital tools and dashboards can help with this. By publicly communicating progress toward achieving diverse workforces, local governments can build trust within their staff and communities, which in turn helps attract and retain diverse talent and improve effectiveness of government programs and services.” Envisio’s blog has a variety of entries that mention diversity.

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Michael Keating is senior editor for American City & County. Contact him at [email protected].