Your agency spent months, maybe years, building it. A public dashboard. An open dataset. A community health index. A program performance portal. The data is accurate, timely, and publicly available.
And yet you aren’t seeing the expected impact. Policymakers aren’t citing it. Constituents aren’t using it. The behaviors it was designed to change remain unchanged.
The problem is almost never the data. After 30 years of helping federal and state agencies communicate complex information to the public, we’ve seen this pattern enough to name it: the interpretation gap. In a high-noise environment, audiences simply don’t have the time, motivation, or context to convert raw metrics into meaning, and then into action. Publishing data is not the same as communicating it.
The good news is that the interpretation gap is closeable. But closing it requires a different approach than many agencies currently take.
Why the Dashboard Era Didn’t Deliver
For two decades, government agencies invested heavily in data democratization: open datasets, public dashboards, and community indicators designed to help the public and policymakers make better decisions. Those investments improved transparency and access. But many leaders now face the same uncomfortable question: Why hasn’t more data reliably produced more action?
Three things typically go wrong:
1. Data without context is noise. A number without a reference point is meaningless. Is a 12% rate good or bad? Improving or worsening? Better or worse than comparable jurisdictions? When audiences have to answer those questions themselves, most won’t. They’ll move on.
2. Exploration tools assume a motivated user. Most government dashboards are built for exploration: filters, dropdown menus, adjustable parameters that let users slice the data however they want. That design assumes users arrive with a specific question, the patience to find the answer, and the analytical confidence to interpret what they find. Most don’t. They arrive, look around briefly, and leave.
3. Neutrality can create a meaning vacuum. For nonpartisan agencies, the instinct to present data without interpretation is understandable and often appropriate. But presenting data without any guidance about what it means, or why it matters, can leave a vacuum that gets filled by others, often with narratives that are less accurate and nuanced.
None of this means the investment in data is wasted. It means the investment in communication, user research and product/experience design hasn’t caught up yet. The agencies that are closing the interpretation gap aren’t necessarily publishing better data. They are presenting it differently, routing it through more impactful channels, and designing experiences that guide their audiences, rather than letting them figure it out on their own.
The fix starts with rethinking what your data products are actually designed to do, and who they are designed for.
(This article is part of a three-part series. Look for my next article, titled “Stop Designing for Exploration. Start Designing for Explanation.”)
Elisabeth Bradley, CEO of Forum One, brings 20 years of experience helping government and nonprofit organizations translate complex digital challenges into real-world impact. She is a regular writer on digital strategy, digital transformation, and organizational change and brings practical, practitioner-level insights on how government and public-sector organizations can make smarter digital investments, build more user-centered experiences, and achieve lasting transformation.
Previously, Elisabeth worked inside nonprofits, at the Nature Conservancy, the League of Conservation Voters, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the United Nations. Elisabeth holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Columbia University, and a Master’s Degree in Global Policy Studies, International Energy, Environment, and Technology Policy from the LBJ School of Public Affairs from the University of Texas at Austin.
Photo Credit: Jakub Zerdzicki, Pexels
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