Business Intelligence Center of Excellence

Overview

The Business Intelligence Center of Excellence (BI COE) is a collection of resources and people that individuals interested in data visualization development can access so they can understand best practices, access style guides, standards, and effectively produce data dashboards.

The BI COE will provide guidance and direction across IDOH for consistent, effective data visualizations that drive business intelligence in the field of public health. In conjunction with the IDOH Executive Data Governance Board (EDGB), the Business Intelligence Center of Excellence’s (BI COE) Data Visualization Governance subcommittee will provide the agency with BI and data visualization recommendations.

Why do we need a BI COE?

The Data Visualization team within the Office of Data and Analytics was founded in August of 2022 to support visualization needs across IDOH. With the growing volume and complexity of data requests, IDOH needed to establish consistency for these data efforts.
The BI COE is intended to create understanding around the development process, standardize steps to create data visuals, and maintain knowledge within the team for easy transitions.
With 70+ IDOH members using Tableau, a data analytics tool, providing users with insightful tools and guides will support the effective creation of health-related data reports and visuals.

Goals
Outcome

Data Visualization Governance Subcommittee Goals

General

Develop, prioritize, and implement a set of BI principles, objectives, and actions for IDOH.
Create strategies and guidelines to improve business intelligence development.
Create guidelines for how to develop and publish visualizations.
Ensure transparency regarding business intelligence efforts, including communication of success stories.

People

Engage stakeholders across IDOH to develop holistic strategies and guidelines for dashboards.
Establish the BI team as Subject Matter Experts for the agency.

Process

Develop processes to implement standardized roles, responsibilities, style guides, design guidelines, and development phases for visualization projects.
Develop a process to set expectations across teams before dashboard development.
Develop a process to intake, track, and prioritize dashboard development work.
Develop a process to efficiently complete all phases of dashboard development.

Technology

Define AD groups on Tableau server to uniformly provide privileges.
Discuss other BI tools used across IDOH to apply visualization best practices.
Track Tableau Desktop licenses to efficiently manage and allocate across IDOH.

Innovation

Foster environment where Tableau users can work collaboratively.
Find opportunities to share our BI work with the public at local, regional, and national conferences/events.

Our Results

The BI COE will empower Tableau users, educate new users and to encourage team members to seek out resources and support from ODA.

Giving transparency and resources to individuals requesting support will ultimately produce high quality data visuals that impact public health. And effective data dashboards will create easy-to-understand visuals and stories for IDOH and the public to consume to gain a deeper understanding of health data.