Two new online dashboards have been launched as a component of the transparency efforts by the Iowa State University Police Department. These dashboards provide the community with real-time access to statistics on campus crime records.
So far, only two dashboards have been made public: arrests and calls for services. The goal is to continue to launch several more dashboards in response to what the community wants to see. They hope to be able to educate the community about what they are arresting people for and what crimes are being committed.
“We’re doing a lot of building checks; we’re doing traffic stops, we’re taking tough calls, we’re taking underage drinking; all of the things that you would expect, but this will give people the ability to understand what’s happening on campus daily and hopefully be part of the public safety team,” ISUPD Chief Michael Newton said.
The department continuously puts out monthly activity reports to communicate with the public about what is going on in their communities. They have sent out these reports for several years, and by working with the chief’s student advisory board, there was a new idea that would hopefully promote even more awareness.
“One of the things I was working on with my student advisory board was what could be some other things that are useful that would help people be responsible for their own personal safety,” Newton said. “Something we’ve been talking about for a while was putting out a daily dashboard so you can see daily what’s happening and what happened the day before on campus.”
The new dashboards were created through the university-offered software, Microsoft Power BI. Using this program, the department was able to save money and put out an easy-to-understand and comprehend product. The dashboard is searchable, so people are able to look for specific pinpoints of data.
Power BI pulls data from the department’s record management system on a daily basis, automatically updating the dashboard every day for the community to see.
Beyond offering statistics from the previous day, viewers can see over five years’ worth of data that is available to click through. The department anticipates this new resource will be a great asset to student research projects. Given the number of data requests throughout the year, there is hope that this dashboard will serve as a great mechanism for students to be able to conduct research and pull data.
Countless filters are available to help sort through all the data that is accessible. Filters range from timelines, event sources, personnel type and category. There are also click tabs that allow demographic data to be represented in different ways across both dashboards.
After being in the works for over a year, the dashboards launched on the website in early October and are now available for the community to access.
“The goal (of the dashboard) is to try and engage the community so that they really understand what the scope of things are that are happening on campus,” Newton said. “I think if we all work together, we can decrease what’s happening.”
