OFM and ERDC Publish New Visualizations for the Statewide Public Four-Year Dashboard

The Office of Financial Management, Forecasting and Research Division has released a newly designed Statewide Public Four-Year Dashboard. OFM worked with the six public universities and colleges to create this centralized dashboard, which provides the public a view of public, four-year institution information, including the types of students enrolled and completing, in addition to the types of degrees awarded.

In 2011, the Legislature passed E2SHB 1795, related to higher education. In an effort to streamline the numerous accountability measures collected by different agencies, the Legislature requested that the public four-year institutions report on many of the Complete to Compete metrics identified by the National Governors Association. Since then, OFM has published the Statewide Public Four-Year Dashboard in response to this legislation, to make this information available to the public. OFM prioritizes student privacy and has developed suppression rules that meet the law and intent of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). These suppression rules are applied to the data before it is released for display.

This newest version of the dashboard makes use of the data visualization capacities of Tableau, and has been user-tested to ensure that visualizations are useful and easy to understand. The hope is that these new and improved visualizations will better equip Washington educators, institutions, and residents in making informed policy decisions that affect Washington institutions of higher education.

The dashboard has a Frequently Asked Questions page (located under the About this Dashboard tab) that addresses common questions and concerns related to the dashboard and its data. If you have any further questions about the dashboard, or need any assistance viewing or navigating the dashboard, please contact Melissa Beard, higher education analyst for the Office of Financial Management.