Durham Strategic Plan Dashboard
Prosperity
Status Indicator: 
In Progress | 
On Hold | 
Complete/Ongoing
Initiative: 2.23 Increase awareness and visibility of the data most important to residents (i.e. dashboards, surveys, live feedback portal)
Creating a Safer Community Together
Description
The ultimate aim is to use data as a vehicle for meaningful communication, engagement, and problem solving with Durham residents. To do this, we propose adopting an emerging trend in research called “stats-in-action” that brings a community participatory process to data analysis. Through this approach, a cross agency public safety team would meet with residents to share data and ask for their assistance in interpreting it, thinking through how and where it is presented (online vs in-person, centralized resource vs multiple resources, multiple languages, data guides and documentation, etc.), and in identifying other questions of interest they would like to consider answering using data. This approach can help the city create data dashboards that are more intuitive to Durham residents and increase their understanding of the challenges facing our city and current efforts underway to address them. The data would likely inspire questions, thoughts, and ideas from community members. This collaborative process would, then, lead to a further round of data analysis—which we rename “data-in-action"—and further conversations, coupled with improved data dashboards. This design would require an ongoing commitment in terms of staff time and creativity.
Key Measures & Data Analysis
Awaiting FY25 Data
Webpage Views
Why is it important?
This initiative would prove useful by encouraging public safety agencies to more actively use data-driven analysis to report on and improve their programs. They would also have more regular and fact-driven spaces in which to explore their programs with community members (using data). There is likely little reason to believe that this initiative would result in traditional savings in time, money, or risk, but it would offer the opportunity for greater gains in the realms of trust, program innovation (driven by data), and accountability.
What have we been doing?
Staff applied a community participatory process — Plan, Act, Listen & Observe, Reflect & Evaluate — to understand what public safety data Durham residents most want, and used those insights to design a centralized hub that makes existing data easier to find and understand.
Key activities include:
• Conducting listening sessions to learn that residents want a single central database on durhamnc.gov — rather than fragmented sources — with data presented in neighborhood-specific, story-based, and visually accessible ways.
• Inventorying the current public safety dashboard landscape, including the Strategic Plan Dashboard, HEART Dashboard, Community Crime Map, DPD incident map, Vision Zero Dashboard, Resident Survey Dashboard, and DFD fire incidents data.
• Developing a prototype Durham Public Safety Data Hub — a centralized landing page on the City website consolidating existing dashboards for 911 Call Data, Community Safety/HEART, Crime Incidents, Fire Incidents, and other public safety data. The prototype landing page for the Data Hub may be found here: https://www.durhamnc.gov/5501/Public-Safety-Data-Hub
What's next?
Continue developing the Public Safety Data Hub through the following activities:
• Departmental Collaboration – Working with departments to refine and improve each dashboard, in conjunction with community feedback.
• Communications Plan – Developing and executing a strategy to drive residents to the DataHub.
• Ongoing Engagement – Connecting the hub to the City's broader public engagement process.
City Website Home Page: Durham, NC | Official Website (durhamnc.gov)
Budget Website Page: Budget & Management Services Department | Durham, NC (durhamnc.gov)
Budget and Management Services Department
Office of Performance and Innovation
Strategy and Performance Division