We knew our Data Portal wasn’t hitting the mark for everyone. We wanted you to be able to quickly and simply find the information you’re looking for. But instead, we heard that it sometimes took some digging if you weren’t familiar with the tool.
That wasn’t good enough for us. We envisioned a tool that could be easily pulled up on the legislative floor, in the newsroom or even by a state agency employee – a tool that can answer the need for quickly getting the right information into the right hands. We believe our new Data Portal can do just that.
Our updates are more than just tweaks or a refresh. We did a major overhaul of how it looks and how to actually find the information you need. These changes were not made blindly. As an organization that stresses the importance of research and data to inform decisions, we conducted user testing before we made any changes. We asked some of you to do a few tasks using the Data Portal – essentially, finding basic facts and figures on the child welfare system. Through this process (and a few years of responding to simple help requests), we learned the primary roadblock to effectively using the Data Portal was simply the navigation and layout.
So our mission was to improve the navigation to relevant data and visualizations, and also create a dashboard so that the most sought after information can be easily found on the landing page. That brings us to the new and improved Child Well-Being Data Portal.
You can find the most basic data on the front page or search by keyword to find more in-depth data and information. It’s more intuitive, has a cleaner design and better fits the needs of people who use it.
Please take a minute to click around and let us know what you think – the good or bad, we’re all ears. If you have any comments or questions, don’t hesitate to contact us at info@partnersforourchildren.org.