Every local government data professional knows the report. It comes due at the end of every month without exception. It pulls data from three or four different systems — the call center platform, the ERP system, the work order management tool, maybe a separate billing export. Someone spends two to four
Every local government data professional reaches a point where they are maintaining both PowerBI dashboards and Excel workbooks simultaneously — and wondering whether that redundancy is necessary or whether one tool should replace the other. The honest answer is that neither replaces the other. Microsoft is not replacing Excel with PowerBI.
The numbers behind America's water infrastructure challenge are sobering. U.S. drinking water infrastructure received a C-grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2025, with 6 billion gallons of treated water lost daily to leaks across a pipe network where many cast-iron mains are
A utility billing department operates at the intersection of two distinct accountability frameworks simultaneously — and most KPI lists written about utility billing miss this entirely. The first framework is financial. A utility billing department is responsible for generating the revenue that funds water, sewer, and stormwater services for an entire
If you read our guide to the 10 most important KPIs for public works departments, you already know what to measure. This article is the implementation guide — how to take a standard work order system export and build a dashboard in Excel that makes those metrics visible to the people
The phrase "smart city" has been circulating in local government circles for over a decade. For much of that time it described an aspiration more than a reality — a future state where sensors, data, and connectivity would transform how cities operated, presented mostly through conference keynotes and federal
There is no single best data tool for urban planners. That statement will frustrate anyone looking for a simple answer — but it reflects the reality of how data work actually happens in local government. A city analyst building a billing performance dashboard reaches for PowerBI. A database administrator pulling records
Budget data is one of the most important and most underutilized assets in local government. Every department has an appropriated budget. Every department tracks expenditures. And in most cities, that data sits in an ERP system or finance department spreadsheet — accessible to accountants, invisible to department heads, and entirely opaque
Housing affordability is one of the most politically charged topics in local government — and one of the most analytically misunderstood. The phrase gets used constantly in council meetings, planning documents, and community conversations, but the underlying data that should anchor those conversations is rarely examined with precision. This article cuts
If you work in local government data analysis, chances are you have encountered both GIS and PowerBI — and wondered at some point whether you need both, which one to learn first, or whether one can simply replace the other. The short answer is no — they cannot replace each other. And
The Census Bureau website is one of the most valuable free resources available to local government professionals — and one of the most confusing to navigate. Dozens of datasets, multiple survey types, overlapping geographies, and a data dissemination platform that rewards patience more than intuition make it easy to find the
If your data work currently lives entirely in Excel, learning Python can feel like an unnecessary detour. Excel handles pivot tables, formulas, and charts perfectly well — so why learn an entirely new tool? The honest answer is that Excel and Python are not competitors. They solve different problems. Excel is