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This is a prototype vision of how a future government service could work. It's not a real service yet, but we're exploring what it could look like. Your feedback will help shape the real service.

QuickSight Dashboard Walkthrough

Step-by-step guide to exploring self-service analytics for council service metrics

Try Self-Service Analytics for Council Data

10 minutes to explore real-time council service metrics

No SQL required. Use Amazon QuickSight to filter, drill down, and export interactive dashboards showing waste collection, planning, housing, and customer service metrics.
Important Sandbox Note: This demo uses Chart.js with Lambda-generated data to demonstrate self-service analytics concepts without QuickSight licensing costs. In production, you would use Amazon QuickSight ($18/reader/month) with SPICE in-memory caching, Glue Data Catalog, and Athena for real-time SQL queries.
No technical knowledge required

This walkthrough guides you through exploring a pre-built analytics dashboard demonstrating self-service BI concepts. Perfect for data analysts, service managers, and anyone evaluating self-service business intelligence for answering operational questions without IT dependency.

What you'll do

In this 10-minute walkthrough, you'll:

  1. Access the QuickSight dashboard - Open the interactive dashboard via CloudFormation output URL (2 minutes)
  2. Explore service metrics overview - View KPI cards, charts, and tables showing council performance (3 minutes)
  3. Use interactive filters and drill-down - Apply date range, service type, and ward filters to explore data (3 minutes)
  4. Understand self-service analytics capability - Calculate ROI and see how officers can answer questions without IT (2 minutes)

Before you start

Important You must have already deployed the QuickSight Dashboard scenario to your Innovation Sandbox account.

Deploy the QuickSight Dashboard scenario if you haven't already. Deployment takes 8-12 minutes (QuickSight subscription setup + data import).

Sample data check

Ready Sample data is pre-loaded and ready to use.

What you'll learn

For data analysts

  • How QuickSight connects to S3/Athena data sources
  • Interactive filtering and drill-down capabilities
  • Exporting dashboards to PDF/Excel for committee reports
  • 80% reduction in ad-hoc report requests from officers
  • Real-time data access vs 7-day lag for manual reports

For service managers

  • Answering operational questions without IT involvement
  • Same-day data vs week-old Excel reports
  • Identifying trends and patterns across services
  • Committee reporting in 30 seconds vs 4 hours of analyst time
  • Data-driven decision making with evidence at your fingertips

Sample council service metrics

We've prepared realistic council service data for you to explore:

Dashboard visualizations

The QuickSight dashboard includes 12 interactive widgets across 5 visualization types:

KPI Cards

4 cards showing key metrics with trend indicators (completion rate, response time, satisfaction score)

Bar Charts

Service requests by month showing volume trends across all 5 council services

Pie Charts

Request types breakdown showing proportional distribution of service demand

Line Charts

Response time trends over 5 months showing improvement or deterioration

Data Tables

Detailed service performance tables with sortable columns for drill-down analysis

Questions officers can answer instantly (without IT)

Self-service analytics transforms how council officers work with data:

Current state (manual Excel reports)

  • Officer submits request: "How many waste collection requests last month?"
  • Wait 3-7 days for IT to create Excel report
  • Receive static report - no ability to explore or filter
  • New question? Submit another ticket, wait another week
  • Result: Decisions made on week-old data, limited exploration

With QuickSight self-service

  • Officer opens dashboard: 1 click, instant access
  • Apply filters: Last month, waste collection service
  • Read answer: 1,250 requests (2 seconds, not 7 days)
  • Follow-up question? Click drill-down, see by ward
  • Result: Real-time data, unlimited exploration, no IT dependency

Impact: Officers ask more questions when answers are instant. This data-driven culture leads to better service delivery, faster problem identification, and evidence-based decision making. IT time freed from repetitive report requests to focus on strategic transformation projects.

The wow moment

When you interact with the dashboard, you'll experience:

  • Instant filtering - Click a filter, see all 12 widgets update in milliseconds
  • Drill-down exploration - Click a bar chart, see underlying data rows
  • Export to PDF/Excel - Committee report generated in 30 seconds (vs 4 hours analyst time)
  • Multi-dimensional analysis - Slice data by service, ward, date simultaneously

This is powered by SPICE (Super-fast, Parallel, In-memory Calculation Engine) - QuickSight's in-memory cache that queries millions of rows in milliseconds. Same responsiveness as Excel, but with cloud-scale data.

Think about your council's data analysts

How many hours per week do analysts spend creating Excel reports?

Consider the impact for a typical council data team:

Current analyst time
4 hours/week creating weekly Excel reports = 208 hours/year
With QuickSight self-service
1 hour/week maintaining dashboards = 52 hours/year
Analyst time saved
156 hours/year freed for strategic analysis
IT ad-hoc reports (current)
20 reports/month × 2 hours = 480 hours/year
IT ad-hoc reports (with self-service)
4 reports/month × 2 hours = 96 hours/year (80% reduction)
IT time saved
384 hours/year freed for strategic projects
Total annual benefit
£3,900 (analyst) + £13,440 (IT) = £17,340/year
QuickSight cost (10 users)
£2,218/year (Reader users + Athena + S3)
Net annual benefit
£15,122 (6.8:1 ROI, 1.5 month payback)

Committee language: "Amazon QuickSight self-service analytics reduces IT dependency by 80%, freeing 384 hours annually for strategic projects. Officers answer operational questions in real-time instead of waiting 7 days for reports. For 10 users, annual savings of £17,340 against £2,218 cost delivers 6.8:1 return on investment with payback in 1.5 months."

Start walkthrough

Takes approximately 10 minutes

Need help?

If you're stuck, check the troubleshooting section or contact us.