How Counties Can Un-Silo Their Data Management with Power BI

So, you work for a small to mid-sized county government and are having difficulty efficiently getting data out of the systems you use. You are not alone. County staff in many areas, including health and human services, law enforcement, and child welfare are limited in their productivity due to poor access to needed data. 

There are many employees who are impacted by this lack of data. Here’s just one example. Case aides need to update reimbursement rates for service agreements based on procedure codes. Instead of being able to click a couple of buttons to see a list of all active service agreements with a specific procedure code, they are currently having to look them up individually, doubling (or more) the amount of time it takes to execute the updates. 

There are many similar situations across county governments. And what happens then is…

The Dreaded Data Dump

If you want to work with the data in these government systems beyond the interaction available through the data entry screens, there are usually two options:

1. Use the canned reports provided by the system.
2. Dump the data out of the system and work with it on your own

The canned reports for option 1 often don’t provide the specific information necessary for a particular process or provide that information in a manner that is just as inefficient as the system screens themselves. A request for a new report to fit your exact needs can take many months or even years to see the light of day…if it ever does at all. There are just too many users with too many individual needs and too few IT people creating reports.

That leaves option 2, the data dump. The problem with the data dump is that the data needs to be manipulated into the format, level of detail, and/or sort order necessary for your specific task. These processes are almost always done in Excel. Excel is a great tool and you can probably come up with the information you need. However, this spreadsheet-based data manipulation often results in a highly manual, many-step process that must be repeated every time you need updated data. This may be only slightly less efficient than the original procedure that had you jumping between multiple entry screens in the government system.

Dump the Data Dump

What you need is a tool that can consume the data dump, be instructed on the data manipulation process once, and then repeat that process over and over again without your manual intervention. What would be even better is if this tool could query the source data directly without a data dump being created. 

Fortunately, such tools exist. 

For my money (and for your county’s money), I believe Power BI is the best. Power BI lets you define a data manipulation process in using an interface that resembles Excel.Because it looks like Excel, this means it’s less intimidating for you and your staff. 

This manipulation process can be done without writing any code (or very little code anyway). The best part is, once the data manipulation process is defined, it can be repeated at any time with the click of one button or, with a bit more setup, on a scheduled basis.

Making the Switch - The Right Way

However, simply installing Power BI is not enough to get you started. Some basic training and guidance on the ins and outs of Power BI is going to be necessary. You can start Googling videos on YouTube…or you can find a more structured approach to learning Power BI. I’m going to suggest you avoid a lot of confusion and frustration by doing the latter. 

Now, about that dream of avoiding the data dump and querying the source data directly…

It is often difficult to find county government resources that have the expertise in the data underlying the systems being used. This causes it to not only be difficult to query the data yourself, but it is also difficult to find anyone who could meaningfully help.

This is where Superior Consulting Services (SCS) comes in. SCS has experience with the complicated data sets underlying the systems counties use, as well as the common processes that county staff execute in delivering services. We have built data and analytics platforms and solutions for county governments using Power BI to deliver information where it is needed and in the form it is needed. This work allows county staff to perform at their peak.

SCS also provides training in tools, such as Microsoft Power BI, that allow county staff to customize and/or build their own reports and dashboards to further enhance their ability to get needed information without relying on IT staff. We know not everyone loves the technical stuff the way we do - so we tailor our training to your team. 

With the training and know-how from SCS, you can leverage Power BI to efficiently obtain county data in the required format for a streamlined workflow.