The Citizen Economy Dashboard: Our learnings from this project

What is the Citizen Economy Dashboard?

The Citizen Economy Dashboard (CED) is a free online tool that collates economic data from a diverse range of sources and makes that data easy for users to locate, understand and analyse.

Key features of the CED are:

• It breaks down technical economic and data terms in a way non-specialists can understand
• It is designed to have a local focus, breaking down data by borough and allowing easy comparisons between different local areas
• It contextualises data; explaining what the data showed but also its limitations and biases
• It links users to people who have lived experience of the topic the data is covering, and who are available to function as co producers and case studies for related content

The CED was designed specifically for journalists, particularly local media ones, but could be used by anyone who wishes to get a better and broader understanding of the UK economy.

Overview of the Citizen Economy Dashboard project

The initial development of the CED was funded by a six month grant from Media Futures, a European Union funder who was looking to support work that ‘used data in new and progressive ways to change the media landscape for the better’. The work took place in an accelerated programme that lasted from May to October 2022.

To ensure the dashboard was designed in the most effective way, we ran detailed user research with journalists from a range of backgrounds and specialities. We also solicited input from data providers, including the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the BBC Shared Data Unit, and the London Datastore. To create the technical parts of the dashboard, Economy worked with two developer groups, Founders & Coders and Outlandish.

Constraints on time and other resources meant that our focus for this part of the project was confined to making a Minimum Viable Product of the CED, rather than a completed version. We also started with a narrower geographical and topical focus; zooming in just on London and just on cost of living data.

How the Citizen’s Economy Dashboard fits into Economy’s new strategy

Economy signed off a new five-year strategy in April 2022. The CED aligns with two of the three key ‘strands’ of this new strategy.

• “Develop and spread practice that creates better conditions for communities experiencing economic injustice to achieve economic change.”

Economy thinks a key way to achieve this goal is to increase the understandability and representativeness of economic coverage and conversation, with economic data forming a key part of this discourse. At present, according to a 2019 study by The Economics Network, nearly 1 in 4 UK adults find the media’s discussion about the economy difficult to understand, and over half think the way they experience the economy is not often represented in the media.

The CED models a way those numbers could be pushed in the opposite direction by dismantling some of the barriers that currently exist between economic information providers and the general public. Journalists who are not economic or data specialists would be able to access a trove of data definitions, explainers and context which they could quickly and easily adapt into their own content, thereby passing this economic and data literacy downstream to their audiences. Simultaneously, structuring the way the data is presented so it always appears alongside a variety of linked but diverse data types, including case studies of people’s lived experience, influences and facilitates the creation of broader and more nuanced economic content. For example, talking about wellbeing measures alongside GDP could give a more accurate portrayal of an area’s economic health.

Since the CED functions as a blueprint for how data could be presented in a more understandable and accessible way, Economy envisions this work of being of interest and use to data providers, many of whom are actively seeking ways to increase participation and understanding of their work from both the media sector and general public.

• “Build deep, long-term relationships with communities experiencing economic injustice and work together to achieve economic change.”

While journalists were the primary target audience we had in mind while building the CED, Economy always envisioned the dashboard being a tool that could assist changemakers in their economic change work, from both an education and communication perspective.

Economic data is often presented in a way that suggests it is impenetrable and uncontestable. Moreover, certain key figures, such as GDP, can end up over-relied upon and used as the sole measurement of complex phenomena, such as ‘economic health’, despite not capturing all aspects of them. By making our dashboard’s data easy for everyone to navigate, understand, display and analyse we wanted to demonstrate a way these issues could be dismantled.

Giving people the tools to understand different types of economic data — and the limitations of any given statistic — makes it easier for them to engage in conversations about the economy and to challenge narratives that do not match their own lived experience. Giving individuals and campaign groups access to numbers and facts that can help them map the issues they have witnessed anecdotally onto broader statistical trends can add strength to their fight, including by making it easier for them to grab the attention of the public, the media and decision makers such as governments.

Key Project Learnings

1) There is huge appetite for this sort of tool across multiple sectors

During both the scoping and creation of the CED we spoke to people from across a broad range of sectors, including media, data collection, funders, third sector organisations, and grassroots changemakers. We received back a great deal of interest and positive responses towards the dashboard’s concept and design. The problems Economy aims to tackle with the CED are aligned with those identified by many members of these groups, including increasing public awareness and understanding of key issues, rebuilding trust and interest in media reporting, improving public access to the information they need to make the best decisions for themselves, increasing diversity and representation, and using the powers of tech and big data in ways that benefit society.

2) Although it has a big payoff, this work is highly resource-intensive

One of the most agreed-upon findings from our user research with journalists was that a tool like the CED will only be effective if it can function as a ‘one stop shop’ which holds most if not all of the relevant information a user needs. Without this, it was clear that we would struggle to get a strong uptake of the platform from the media sector. Moreover, the power of the CED to portray a more nuanced take on topics by displaying a range of data types relies on alternative types of data being sourced and programmed into the system.

Adding in this data turned out to be much more resource-intensive than first anticipated. The problem was less to do with locating the data and more about the time and specialised tech skills required to programme data into the dashboard, and also to format the data in a way that makes it comparable and allowed us to generate graphs and other useful graphics to aid its understandability.

This issue was combined with the aspect of the CED that we knew from the start would be highly resource-intensive: creating the appropriate context for the data. This context included easy-to-understand definitions, descriptions of the methodology used, and deep dives into what a particular data type can and cannot show. This work also requires access to specific skill sets, as it is important that this work combines economic expertise and factuality with an ability to communicate clearly and thoroughly.

3) There is a big gap in hyper-local data provision in the UK, which harms the quality of local news

When it highlighted both the growing threats to the provision of public interest news in the UK and the importance of preserving it, the Cairncross Review noted that local news was particularly vulnerable. Our work on the CED focused our attention on how a paucity of local data is a key component of this problem. During our user research with local paper journalists they noted their difficulties with finding both local data and also graphic representations of that data. The MVP of the CED used borough-level statistics, and while this was appreciated by our user testers, some of the feedback we received was that being able to zoom in even further would be incredibly valuable.

A larger trove of hyper-local data would give reporters and grassroots changemakers information that could deepen their audience’s understanding of local issues and make calls for change or awareness more persuasive. Although the role of the CED has never been envisioned as involving the collection of its own data, we hope that the desire for more local data we uncovered is one that data collectors may heed. Their involvement would not only take pressure off those working on the ground, who are too time and money scarce to do as much of their own data collection as they would like, but also allow hyper-local data across the UK to be standardised and therefore compared.

Project next steps

As detailed above, the short-term, limited grant which allowed the initial development of the CED was used to create a MVP and blueprint of the tool. Developing the CED to full usability will require support and resources that are beyond Economy’s current capabilities. Therefore, our next steps will be to focus on sharing the learnings of this project and connecting with other organisations who might be interested in partnering with us on this.

If this is something you or your organisation would be interested in speaking to us about please contact our Head of Media at beth.leslie@ecnmy.org