City officials turn to new technologies

SANDPOINT — The city of Sandpoint is expanding and new technologies are being created to keep employees and residents alike on the same page.

Linda Heiss, Sandpoint’s grants and performance management administrator, unveiled the city's new and upcoming performance metrics dashboard at the City Council meeting Wednesday.

This new dashboard will allow residents to forgo searching for lengthy documents, construction and city development questions. The dashboard would incorporate different layers to view financial information and software as well as communicate with park and recreation, construction, building permits, water and sewer information and progress on other city development projects.

“PMD allows people a lot of information in a useful and interactive way for residents,” said Heiss.

Road construction and new wastewater treatment plant updates, progress and grant information will be updated on the dashboard for the convenience of residents, city employees and city administration. City officials said the tool will promote transparency as well as inform the public of city business and spending.

In addition, the dashboard would be updated in real time. When surveys are due or when data is needed, there will be no lull of information as city employees will not be dependent on other departments to provide needed data, Heiss said.

Currently, different city departments utilize different software which doesn’t always communicate with each other. With the PMD, the different software in the various city departments will communicate and share data on one platform.

The city of Sandpoint is using the International City/County Management Association and the American Water Works Association for benchmarking software to compare the growth and development of Sandpoint to that of similar cities.

These associations specialize in benchmarking, which in business jargon means to compare a business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and best practices from other companies.

For Sandpoint this means comparing metrics and processes to other communities and cities that are comparable to Sandpoint.

Working with associations like ICMA and AWWA allows city officials to compare apples to apples when it comes to city metrics.

“A significant challenge to benchmarking initiatives is getting everyone on the same page – in terms of what to measure, how to measure it, and how and when to collect and analyze the data,” ICMA officials said.

“Collecting data has been hard in the past,” said Heiss.

She is hopeful that the new dashboard will remove past difficulties in data collection.

Sandpoint officials said the city’s new benchmarking and dashboard will cause city projects and master plans to move through the pipeline smoother and will keep everyone on the same page.

Such jurisdiction led dashboards allow the cities and counties to be in the driver’s seat when it comes to data collection methods, software choices, and timeframes for entering, analyzing, or reporting performance data, said ICMA.

“[The dashboard is a] great tool for the residents and councilmembers and anyone else who needs direction,” Councilwoman Deb Reuhle said.