How do we know we're providing the most important services to our community? How do we know those services are successful? Bellevue believes in data-informed decision making to help answer those questions.

With performance management, we use data and evidence to ensure accountability, maintain the community’s trust, and achieve outcomes. The city collects and shares its data regarding performance in our Council's strategic target areas, department services and through surveys. Check out the left sidebar to see more.

Data-Informed Decision Making in Action

Police Department Dashboard-Use of Force

Police Transparency

Bellevue Police Department is committed to improving transparency and trust with our community. This dashboard aims to provide information to help residents become more aware of public safety issues in the community so that we can work together to develop solutions to make our community safer.

traffic dashboard

AI for Vision Zero

To reduce traffic deaths and injuries (Vision Zero), Bellevue's Transportation Department is using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to collect and analyze real-time data about "near-misses" and make improvements to potentially problematic intersections. Bellevue is a leader in the Vision Zero movement, and its commitment to data will further its progress.

State of Neighborhoods web page

State of our Neighborhood

Bellevue neighborhoods are distinct and dynamic, growing and changing over time. The State of Our Neighborhoods maps provide rich data on neighborhood livability, diversity, housing, development, mobility, environment, safety, investments and connections.

Environmental Stewardship Performance Dashboard

Environmental Stewardship Initiative

Through its Environmental Stewardship Initiative, the city has been addressing the challenges of population growth, climate change and sustainable resource use since 2007. A performance dashboard helps us track progress toward targets on greenhouse gas emissions and energy use, as well as benchmark ourselves against other municipalities.

Sometimes called performance measurement, performance management, or performance analytics, performance is simply the practice of data-informed decision-making. It is a management practice that uses data and metrics to guide the services you deliver, so that you achieve the goals you set out for yourself. Performance requires the systematic analysis of quantitative and qualitative information, and the communication and reporting of your progress with data visualizations and narratives.

Performance management is also exactly that--a management process. It is a structure for regular conversations around data, to allow you to take action and solve problems.

Simply put, performance is a tool. It allows you to answer the all-important question: How do you know? How do you know you are focusing on what matters most to your community? When faced with a problem, how do you know what decision to make? When you take action, how do you know it is successful? Performance just helps you ask and answer those questions.

If you want to learn more, check out our progress in Council's strategic target areas, department performance metrics, or our community surveys of residents and businesses. If you want to look at the data yourself, explore our open data portal, which allows you to create your own visualizations and custom datasets. 

If you have more specific questions, you can always contact Performance Program staff Rosie Cullen or Micah Phillips.

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