What does the government mean when they talk about ‘accountability?  In our last post, we discussed the reactions to the very ambitious Federal IT Dashboard. The Federal government’s recent moves to incorporate business intelligence into the determination of how stimulus funds are spent seems to be another move along this path.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) includes detailed and strict guidelines for recipients of the funds from the economic stimulus package. Timo Elliot’s excellent analysis describes the situation well, “…the US government is essentially mandating effective use of business intelligence for any organization that touches the US$787 billion in economic stimulus money, and major vendors such as SAP and IBM have quickly rolled out reporting packages to help organizations meet the new requirements.” 

The trouble with spending billions on lofty goals: if people don’t know what it’s doing for them, in their town, in their neighborhood, then they think the money’s being wasted. So it’s great to talk about investing in America’s infrastructure, but an essential communications link is broken if you don’t let people know that spending equates to the bridge they take every day to work getting an overhaul so it doesn’t collapse into the river. Metrics are essentially wasted on the average voter, unless you filter the data with location intelligence.

In the image below -- created by the federal government to demonstrate deployment of ARRA funds -- consider the impact of the sphere titled, "Infrastructure and Science." What does it tell you about where or how that money is being spent?

Now imagine maps of every county where stimulus funds are being spent on infrastructure, showing any interested taxpayer just what investments are being made in their area. You'd be able to map the location of the bridges, sewer systems, and roads where stimulus dollars were being spent. Let's take an imaginary example: below you can see a map based on fictional data showing infrastructure projects in Texas. The yellow dots are bridges, red ones are sewer and water treatment systems, green are major road improvements, and blue are buildings - libraries, schools, and so on.

Which image has more meaning to you?  Which convinces a Texan to support policies and candidates who are aligned with these projects? 

Of course, there are many other uses in government.  This might also be a good project for the right non-profit watchdog group – what percentage of the ARRA funds are going to the districts of members of the Appropriations Committee, for example? It's one thing to read a report, but a national map showing where the dollars are flowing would do far more to engage voters.

Although our work focuses primarily in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) and international development fields, the applications are analogous, and the impact is significant, regardless of the field of application.  Please let us know if you would like to discuss this more.

The office of the Federal Chief Information officer has released the new Federal IT Dashboard, which reports on the progress of IT projects -- and related budgets -- of over 7,000 IT-related projects from nearly 30 federal departments, agencies and administrations. 

In their own words:

The IT Dashboard provides the public with an online window into the details of Federal information technology investments and provides users with the ability to track the progress of investments over time. The IT Dashboard displays data received from agency reports to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), including general information on over 7,000 Federal IT investments and detailed data for nearly 800 of those investments that agencies classify as "major".

A quick review of the site reveals two important trends, and dozens of interesting observations.  Regarding the former:

1. There is "room for improvement" in managing IT at Federal agencies, but the quality of work varies widely, with strong self-reported performance at Defense and Treasury, and awful scores from Veterans Affairs.

2. This is a big step for the Federal Government, and should provide a baseline for financial and scheduling performance updates on a wide range of issues in the future.

In his thoughtful review of the dashboard, O'Reilly Media (which runs, among many other influential properties, the Where 2.0 conference) Founder and CEO Tim O'Reilly calls it "radical transparency," and expands on this concept:

The dashboards are an incredibly ambitious undertaking. In the first place, there has never been a government-wide view like this of all IT spending, and the progress of projects. What's even more remarkable, though, is that the dashboards are being shared with the public. It's a bit like having your performance review posted on the company bulletin board for all to see.

O'Reilly quote his interview with Federal CIO Vivek Kundra:

It's a cultural transformation, in terms of recognizing that we are in the public square. The work that we do is work that is supposed to be performed in the interest of the American taxpayers. And so making visible how we're performing means fleshing out these complicated issues in the public square. Culturally, making the shift is much better than letting it hide under the veil of secrecy.

Naturally, we at AWhere applaud this progress, and look forward to days when more of the Federal budget and performance is so radically transparent.  It will be a hard genie to put back in the bottle. 

In lunchtime conversation this week, AWhere CEO John Corbett said of the initiative:

Accountability and transparency -- and outing senators who move money only to their area -- is the only way to clean up government.  But these simple pie charts are just the first step. When we consider big projects, whether it's mapping WalMart Retail Link data, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation program research, or the Federal budgets, a geographical context is critical to understand the impact of the information.  With these large data sets, and the general inconsistency of data formatting between them, it becomes nearly impossible for the human brain to distinguish meaning.  When we can provide not only primary colored graphics, but easy-to-use location intelligence that identifies not just the "what," but the "where," citizens and analysts alike can begin to understand what this information means to them individually. 

In other words, when people can see not only gross government overspending, but exactly where that money is going, it allows to focus our general outrage and possibly even do something about it.  

The number of major retailers releasing point-of-service (POS) data to suppliers continues to grow. Retailers are increasingly likely to understand that sharing POS data with suppliers helps enhance supply chain performance, and many retailers are turning to increasingly sophisticated systems to release this data regularly.

From the retailer’s perspective, sharing their POS data is a win because they can improve customer satisfaction by reducing out-of-stocks and preventing oversupply. In a recession, ensuring that your shelves are not overstocked is critical. Suppliers can stock far more accurately and reap the rewards in higher sales. WalMart has led the field in this area: through their RetailLink® service, WalMart provides their suppliers with POS data, free of charge. Late in 2008, Walgreens began to provide suppliers with data daily, indexed by item.

Other retailers are taking steps in the same direction, albeit more cautiously in most instances. Industry insiders point to Kroger, Loblaw, Target, Whole Foods, Publix and Home Depot as other retailers who have begun passing POS data to their suppliers. However, some retailers are choosing to release POS data either selectively, to top suppliers only, or are charging suppliers for the data.

One thing none of them have realized yet: these reports contain a lot of data, and the analysis demands some heavy numbers crunching for suppliers to gain actionable insight. What we have learned working with clients who analyze RetailLink data is that strong, flexible visual interfaces make this very location-intensive data far easier to understand.

One important use of POS data at the store level is to reveal patterns of sales strength and weakness. Understanding the reasons for the pattern allows you to correct the bad and exploit the good.  For poor sales:  is it too many out-of-stocks? Distribution issue? Did it rain all week?  Or, if you sell umbrellas, did it fail to rain all week?  Does the store attract enough of my target demographic?  Is my competitor in same store? Is my competitor next door? Has there been a price cut by a competitor that I had been beating?  

So how do you effectively leverage the power of the POS data, which can mean manipulating thousands if not millions of data points? Using AWhere’s mapping software, you can both visualize POS information quickly and access specific store lists instantly.

Below are a series of maps from a major American retail chain that has implemented a POS data portal for its vendors.  Working with our client, we indexed each store to relevant demographics (incidence of African Americans in the first, incidence of people over the age of 65 in the second) in order to identify the right location for specific products of particular interest to those groups of consumers.

This first image shows all the retailer’s 960 locations, highlighting in green all the stores that index at over 150 for African American households in the immediate vicinity. You'll note the clusters in South Atlanta and Central Florida.

The next map highlights stores that index at over 150 for the over 65 age group; their strong influence is clearly visible along the Florida coastlines and in Hilton Head.

This final map of the stores in the Atlanta Metroplex shows ethnic mix per store. Gray is African-American, orange is Hispanic, yellow is Asian, and green is White (non-Hispanic).  The strong presence of Asian and Hispanic on the NorthEast side of the city is easily seen on the map.

With this type of information available in a visual analysis, decisions about how to stock products can be reached much faster, and with greater accuracy than if you were doing the same analysis in a spreadsheet.

We like to talk about all kinds of practical applications of location intelligence and geo-analytics. Please contact us with any questions.