I thought we'd got over the targets thing? Have goals, sure, but specific 'measurable' targets with all the unintended consequences and incentives they create?
Counting is hard.
Said: "Yes, PM there's now less small boats coming over"
Unsaid: "The boats are bigger or have more people on them."
You can cut waiting lists by surging short term capacity or you can create a health system that reduces demand on hospitals over time. The metrics could look very similar but the two systems are entirely different.
What's the betting someone from TBI has done a PowerBI viz that war games it all out. "and the great thing about digital identity verification is we'll be able to count people in real time"
and to be actionable it is has to be designed, seen and used by the people who have operational control - which is not the Cabinet Office or the Cabinet
Re the photograph thing, I think it's also important to be able to re-create those photos of the past from the dashboard - eg to be able to see the data of the past. I'm not sure if the National Archives do this, but they should.
Ultimately you need to work out what you need feedback on and for that feedback to be actionable.
The "stop the boats" is a classic example where there weren't that many obvious leavers when the dashboard went red! (Hence you end up with daft leave the ECHR ideas because that's your only leaver)
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Counting is hard.
Said: "Yes, PM there's now less small boats coming over"
Unsaid: "The boats are bigger or have more people on them."
Even for the simplest reasons, such as getting timely, accurate, reliable data, let alone what the data might then show.
Being in government truly is like being on a merry-go-round, a constant sense of motion but the same sights keep coming round again and again.
A dashboard is actionable.
That light is red, your pants are on fire.
That dial is reading 27 thousand megagrommits, oh no, tractor production will fall in Sžegerely next month unless we take action!
A dashboard is a decision.
Good luck to the Number 10 team. We built ours with 2 people by hitting D3 with hammers and bribing data gatekeepers with Dreamies.
But without a feedback mechanism all you end up with is a photograph
https://d3js.org/
Each indicator had a named owner and the PM could just press a button to directly communicate with them.
The reaction of my SCS colleagues was as you can imagine not entirely positive :)
The "stop the boats" is a classic example where there weren't that many obvious leavers when the dashboard went red! (Hence you end up with daft leave the ECHR ideas because that's your only leaver)