On December 29, 2023, the public-facing Power BI dashboard developed with the Virginia Office of Data Governance and Analytics became available on the Virginia Department of Forensic Science (“the Department”) website. The dashboard provides information on case submissions, case completions, average case turnaround times, and caseloads/backlogs for the past ten years in all testing disciplines. Although the Laboratory Information Management System used by the Department has the capability to report case submissions, case completions, average case turnaround times, and caseloads/backlogs, the reports are not flexible, must be run by a system administrator, and do not easily provide information in a graphic format.
Providing this information to Department customer agencies and the general public increases agency transparency. Among other things, this will enable attorneys and the courts to consider current case turnaround trends when scheduling trials, thereby reducing the potential for case continuances.
Having these workload statistics available to governmental decision makers is also beneficial. Easily available case statistics can help reframe resource needs discussions. Historically, backlogs and average case turnaround times have been used to measure the performance of forensic science service providers. However, those two metrics are more of a symptom than a cause. Using the dashboard, case submission and case completion data are readily available for comparison to show shortcomings in testing capacity. Staffing and instrumentation levels need to be sufficient so that testing results are provided within timeframes appropriate for customer needs. This requires a shift from just addressing backlogs to planning for and providing the proper analytical capacity to handle the volume of case submissions.
Additional internal dashboard projects will be described, and the public dashboard, available here: https://dfs.virginia.gov/about-dfs/case-statistics-dashboard/, will be demonstrated.