Quite often, IPR Practitioners are asked to develop executive level dashboards or reports to portray the health of the organisation.
Stakeholders expect timely reporting and delays can impact their confidence in the organisation's ability to manage its IPR responsibilities effectively. Late reporting can also render the data irrelevant or make accurate interpretation difficult. This can lead to a loss of stakeholder interest and engagement and a lack of ownership and involvement in the reporting process.
In our latest Insights Report, 68% of NSW IPR Practitioners said pulling reports easily vs having to do a lot of manual handling was their biggest challenge when it comes to reporting on IPR to external stakeholders.
Despite efforts to improve data collection and reporting across councils, there are still isolated pockets of information and failures in processes that hinder accurate reporting. For example, data on workforce statistics and unplanned leave may be getting collected, but more time and resources are required to analyse and draw actionable insights.
“Most report generators are really boring, they don’t look at how important it is to create the story that goes with the data, and when you’re reporting externally, you need to think about the story”. - NSW IPR Practitioner
This is partly due to the manual nature of the data collection, analysis and reporting process, which involves cutting and pasting data from various sources and creating graphs and reports. This creates a major bottleneck, preventing organisations from being able to access data for timely decision-making.
To solve this problem, council systems must make interpreting and visualising data from multiple sources as simple as possible.
Creating simple but powerful visuals will help to tell the story of the status of strategies, projects, plans or services as a whole, quickly and easily. Templated reports and dashboards tailored to a wide range of stakeholder groups’ needs should only be “one-click” away.
“I’d like visual access to that data, so I would love to be able to have some dashboards, some indicators, some like one page summary, something that kind of means that anyone that's looking for the status of the operational plan over all of the asset works program has got one spot they can go look at.” - NSW IPR Practitioner
Best Practice Tips for removing the burden
Understand Stakeholder needs and capability
Interview stakeholders and ensure their needs are fully articulated so that reporting meets their specific needs.
Map out requirements of different stakeholders and address any potential conflicts upfront.
Don’t shy away from addressing conflicts or assume that they cannot be managed as this will lead to vague reporting.
Automated visual aids
Develop dashboards and indicators that enable stakeholders to quickly assess the status of projects or services as a whole to better understand and interpret complex data effectively.
Automate data collection and integration, based on the ongoing needs of various stakeholder groups, to help speed up the reporting process.
Ensure systems eliminate the need for manual data manipulation.
Training and capacity building
Encourage staff to think more critically about the data they collect and how it can be used to improve services and decision-making.
Providing training and capacity-building opportunities for staff members to improve data literacy and foster a culture of data-driven decision-making.
Uncover all the insights in the latest report - IPR and Technology.
Download a copy of the Insights Report here