Such explosive growth can lead to as many problems as benefits, and that’s why local leaders have turned to one of the hottest tools in government technology: an online dashboard.
Using technology from Envisio, the recently deployed dashboard provides what amounts to a unified, single digital source of tracking capital projects — an attractive use of technology for a town whose population has increased to about 12,000 in 2024, up from 5,200 in 2020.
As the metro area stretches toward Northlake along I-35W, the city, its residents, developers and others use the dashboard to track some 18 projects, Major Youngblood, Northlake’s director of administrative services, tells Government Technology.
Projects include a hotel conference center, road reconstruction, meter upgrades and other work that befits what the World Population Review calls the 13th-fastest growing city in Texas, itself one of the fastest growing states.
“We have lean services,” Youngblood said, adding the city has about 80 employees, most of them police or public works. As well, previous methods of tracking capital improvement projects provided more opportunity for human error.
The new dashboard helps to ease those problems while upgrading transparency around development, which can cause political and budget tensions for any municipality, not least one that is experiencing explosive growth.
“The council is always asking town managers where we are with things,” Youngblood said of capital planning, and the dashboard allows for quicker answers than do spreadsheets and manual reports. As for the public, they had to submit requests for information that they can now find on the new dashboard.
The future promises ample use of the dashboard.
Northlake’s comprehensive plan, for instance, says the city could potentially annex 13.5 acres in the coming years, and that 25 percent of Northlake already is zoned for mixed use and planned development. By 2045, city leaders expect more than 53,000 people to live in town.
As Northlake seeks to guide development with the dashboard, other public agencies are using the tool for a variety of tasks that include housing, education, drug overdoses and wildlife management.
Expect more gov tech business to revolve around the deployment and use of dashboards, according to Elizabeth Steward, vice president of marketing and research for Envisio.
“Over the last year we have seen significant growth in dashboards that track major public investments,” she told Government Technology via email. “We are seeing many new dashboards that focus on transit investments, recreation facilities and other major infrastructure and redevelopment projects.”
Budgeting, too, promises more room for dashboard growth, she said, a trend bolstered by the Government Finance Officers Association emphasizing “the importance of linking budgets to strategic priorities and measurable, visible outcomes.”
