EPC Group helped the City of Weston, Florida — a municipality of 70,000+ residents in Broward County — implement Microsoft Power BI for budget transparency, citizen services analytics, and departmental reporting. Service request resolution time dropped from 8.5 days to 4.2 days. Citizen satisfaction scores improved by 25%. Departmental reporting became 60% faster.
Transforming municipal government with transparent, data-driven decision-making
How EPC Group helped the City of Weston, Florida leverage Microsoft Power BI to deliver budget transparency, streamline departmental reporting, and create public-facing analytics dashboards that strengthened citizen trust and engagement.
60%
Faster Budget Reporting
25%
Citizen Satisfaction Increase
8
Departments Connected
70K+
Citizens Served
The City of Weston, a municipality of over 70,000 residents in Broward County, Florida, recognized that its legacy reporting infrastructure was failing to meet the growing demands for government transparency and data-driven policy decisions. City leadership wanted to modernize how budget data, citizen services metrics, and departmental performance were tracked and communicated to both internal stakeholders and the public.
Opaque budget processes: Annual budget data was locked in PDF documents and static spreadsheets, making it difficult for city commissioners and residents to understand how taxpayer dollars were allocated across departments.
Siloed departmental data: Eight departments -- including Parks & Recreation, Public Works, Community Services, and Finance -- each maintained separate reporting systems with no cross-departmental analytics capability.
Citizen service blind spots: The city lacked consolidated metrics on service request resolution times, permit processing durations, and resident satisfaction scores, making performance improvement difficult to measure.
Commission meeting prep: Staff spent 40+ hours before each monthly commission meeting compiling reports manually, often delivering data that was already 2-3 weeks outdated by the time it was presented.
EPC Group implemented a Power BI analytics platform tailored for municipal government, with a focus on transparency, compliance with Florida Sunshine Laws, and citizen accessibility. The solution included both internal operational dashboards and public-facing transparency portals.
Built an embedded Power BI dashboard on the city's website allowing residents to explore budget allocations by department, fund, and category. Interactive drill-downs show how every dollar is spent -- from parks maintenance to public safety.
Implemented granular access controls so department directors see only their data, the city manager sees all departments, and public-facing dashboards display only approved, anonymized data compliant with Florida public records requirements.
Created a real-time scorecard tracking 311 service requests, permit applications, code enforcement cases, and utility billing metrics. Response times and resolution rates are measured against SLA targets by department.
Automated the generation of commission meeting data packets with live Power BI reports. Commissioners now access real-time dashboards on tablets during meetings, enabling data-driven policy discussions.
Monthly and quarterly budget reports that previously took 5+ days to compile are now generated in real time. Department heads access live budget-vs-actuals dashboards instead of waiting for finance to produce static reports.
The city's online transparency dashboard received 12,000+ unique visitors in its first year, with residents exploring budget data by department and category. The portal was recognized by the Florida Government Finance Officers Association.
By tracking and improving service request resolution times (average dropped from 8.5 days to 4.2 days), overall citizen satisfaction scores increased by 25% in the annual resident survey, with particular gains in responsiveness ratings.
Pre-meeting report preparation dropped from 40+ hours to under 4 hours. Commissioners now make data-driven decisions using live dashboards, reducing the average meeting duration by 35 minutes while improving the quality of policy discussions.
For the first time, city leadership can compare performance metrics across all 8 departments using standardized KPIs. This enabled identification of best practices in Parks & Recreation that were replicated across Community Services.
Historical revenue data and grant utilization trends feed forecasting models that help the city plan multi-year budgets. Grant compliance reporting time decreased by 50%, ensuring continued federal and state funding eligibility.
Student analytics transformation for public education
200+ projects tracked, $1.8M saved annually
45% faster claims processing, fraud detection
“EPC Group transformed how our city communicates budget and performance data to both our commissioners and our residents. The public transparency dashboard has become one of our most visited web pages, and our staff now spends time analyzing data instead of compiling spreadsheets. The Power BI implementation has fundamentally changed how we make decisions as a city -- everything is data-driven now.”
Power BI enables municipalities to create interactive, public-facing dashboards that allow citizens to explore budget allocations by department, fund, and category. Real-time data refresh means budget-vs-actuals reports are always current, eliminating the weeks-long manual report compilation process. Row-level security ensures internal operational data remains protected while public dashboards display only approved, anonymized information compliant with state open records laws.
Yes, Power BI can be configured to comply with Florida Sunshine Laws and similar state transparency requirements. EPC Group implements Publish to Web for public dashboards while maintaining Azure AD with MFA for internal staff access. PII masking, row-level security, and audit trails ensure that sensitive employee or citizen data is never exposed in public-facing reports while still meeting open government data mandates.
A typical municipal Power BI implementation takes 12-20 weeks depending on the number of departments, data sources, and complexity of reporting requirements. EPC Group follows a phased approach: discovery and data assessment (weeks 1-4), data integration and modeling (weeks 5-10), dashboard development and UAT (weeks 11-16), and training and rollout (weeks 17-20). Cities with fewer data sources or simpler requirements can often complete in 10-12 weeks.
Power BI connects to virtually any government operations system including Tyler Technologies (ERP/financials), CityWorks (asset management), SeeClickFix (311 service requests), Accela (permitting and licensing), utility billing systems, GIS platforms, and legacy databases. EPC Group builds automated ETL pipelines using Power BI Dataflows and on-premises data gateways to securely extract, transform, and load data from these systems on scheduled refresh cycles.
Power BI provides real-time dashboards tracking citizen service request resolution times, permit processing durations, code enforcement response rates, and utility billing metrics against SLA targets. By measuring and visualizing these KPIs, department heads can identify bottlenecks, reallocate resources, and implement process improvements. The City of Weston saw citizen satisfaction scores increase 25% and service request resolution times drop from 8.5 days to 4.2 days after implementing Power BI analytics.
EPC Group specializes in Power BI implementations for state and local government, with deep expertise in public transparency, compliance, and citizen services analytics. Contact us for a free consultation.
EPC Group helped the City of Weston, Florida — a municipality of 70,000+ residents in Broward County — implement Microsoft Power BI for budget transparency, citizen services analytics, and departmental reporting. Service request resolution time dropped from 8.5 days to 4.2 days. Citizen satisfaction scores improved by 25%. Departmental reporting became 60% faster.
Weston recognized that its legacy reporting infrastructure was failing to meet growing demands for government transparency and data-driven policy decisions.
EPC Group deployed Power BI connecting Weston's government operations systems to a unified analytics platform.
EPC Group connected Power BI to Weston's full government operations tech stack.
Weston published Power BI dashboards for citizens to view city budget and service data without logging in. This was a significant step in government transparency.
EPC Group builds budget transparency dashboards, citizen services analytics (311 tracking), department KPI scorecards, capital project trackers, and utility analytics for municipal governments. Dashboards integrate with Tyler Technologies, CityWorks, Accela, SeeClickFix, and GIS platforms.
Power BI connects to the city's ERP and financial systems, extracts budget and expenditure data, and publishes a public-facing dashboard that citizens can view without logging in. The City of Weston used this approach to increase citizen trust and reduce manual financial reporting time by 60%.
A municipal Power BI implementation typically takes 8–16 weeks depending on the number of source systems and dashboard complexity. The City of Weston engagement included six source systems and four distinct dashboard types. EPC Group provides a detailed timeline during the discovery call.
EPC Group delivers Power BI analytics for municipal governments and public sector organizations. Call (888) 381-9725 or request a 30-minute discovery call.