Staff roll out Arapahoe County's public performance dashboard and outline next steps for measures

Kendra and Laura presented an update on the county's strategic work plan and the publicly available performance dashboard launched in 2025. They said the dashboard now includes about 70 measures and that staff are working to map departmental programs and projects to the strategic objectives.

"We launched with 70, measures, which includes 44 outcome measures and 26 context measures," Laura said while walking the board through the public scorecard. Presenters described the goal of linking projects and program activities to measurable outcomes, embedding performance reporting in department workflows and providing more context on why a measure matters. Commissioners asked about benchmarking and whether comparable data or aggregated objective-level indicators could be shown; staff said some measures already include benchmarks and that aggregation requires fuller objective-level measures and discussion about weighting.

Board members raised concerns about lagging indicators, external intervening events (for example, changes in federal benefits that could affect county outcomes), and how to make the dashboard useful for budget decisions. Staff committed to continuing work to expand and refine measures, add context and return with additional reporting cadence recommendations.