A Prototype Framework for Visualizing Municipal Finance Data

This video provides a prototype framework that demonstrates how municipal finance data from Ontario’s Financial Information Returns (FIR) can be visualized and accessed in a dashboard setting that allows easy comparisons to be made between Ontario municipalities and over time. 

Based on the results of a stakeholder workshop, this dashboard provides sample visualizations in the area of revenues, expenditures, debt, and infrastructure. This is a prototype and would have to be developed further to be functional. A fully interactive version of this dashboard would allow users to add their own datasets, compare different municipalities, look at data over time, break down figures on a per capita or per household basis, and so on.

This prototype is intended to show one possible way in which municipal finance data can be made more engaging, accessible, and useful to a broad audience, including municipal finance professionals, policymakers, and the public. 

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Cities, Data, and Digital Innovation
by Mark Kleinman, 2016