Abstract
AbstractPolicy-making in local public administrations is still largely based on intuition rather than being backed up by data and evidence. The goal of this work is to introduce the methodology and software tools for contributing toward transforming the existing intuition-based paradigm of policy-making into an evidence-driven approach enabled by heterogeneous sources of data already available in the city. More specifically, methods for data collection, efficient data storage, and data analysis are implemented to measure the economic activity, assess the environmental impact and evaluate the social consequences of certain policy decisions. Subsequently, the extracted pieces of evidence are used to inform, advise, monitor, evaluate, and revise the decisions made by policy planners. Our contribution in this work is on outlining and deploying an easily extendable system architecture to harmonize and analyze heterogeneous data sources in ways that are found to be useful for policy-makers. For evaluating this architecture, we examine the case of a controlled parking system in the city of Thessaloniki and try to optimize its operation by balancing effectively between economic growth, environmental protection, and citizen satisfaction.
Highlights
Brief information about the dashboard and the goals of this questionnaire.2
We examine a policy involving the controlled-parking system (CPS) of Thessaloniki and demonstrate how our interactive dashboard aids the policy-makers in making informed decisions throughout a specific step-by-step scenario
Evaluate, that is quantify and assess the effectiveness of implemented policy measures based on the information gathered through the monitoring mechanisms and a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) that serve as the criteria for success or failure of the enforced policies
Summary
Evaluation of the platform goal to reach its objectives in regard to making more informed and effective decisions.11. The usefulness of the dashboard about the specific use case was evaluated positively, as it allowed faster decisions, encouraging the combination of different types of data (economic, environmental, and social) for decision-making (Figure 6). The contribution of the dashboard that was evaluated most positively by the users was the fact that more parameters than before are considered before making a decision for the specific policy at hand. The users performed comparisons that were impossible to perform before, and they emphasized that the dashboard offered better understanding of the various problems they face in their work on a daily basis, and that they made more effective decisions (Figure 7). The visualization of data in a simple and comprehensive way made it easier for them to extract valuable information and helped them save time in the decision-making process, when trying to decide which sector should switch type
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
