Using automated data visualization to improve responsiveness to public concerns about regulated facilities

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2023

Wake County’s Environmental Health and Safety Division (EH&S) regulates 33 facility types including restaurants, hotels, pools, and childcare centers. With over 6,700 facilities regulated by Wake County, having a reporting system and response that is timely and consistent is important to preventing further sickness in the community. Environmental health concerns at regulated facilities are called “complaints” and must be investigated by staff. Historically, it took two hours to pull data, export it to excel, and manually calculate the complaint compliance report and the division had no means to identify trends of recurring complaints at regulated facilities. On January 10, 2022, a Complaint Log Compliance Report was developed using Power Bi software that incorporates type-specific response time expectations and other key information. This real-time, automated report provides data and visualization for the current compliance response time regarding complaints received from the public. The report is used to immediately identify complaint responsiveness and proper collection of required information. Compliance with expected response times increased from a monthly average of 95.7% in 2019-2021 to 97.9% in 2022. EH&S leadership and stakeholders now have a visual management tool that provides real-time information to provide staff with corrective training and to monitor the pulse of the division’s responsiveness to customer complaints and consumer safety.