What a decade of national surveys, vendor benchmarks, and city analytics say about resident demand for municipal dashboards — and why bond and capital programs should take notice
Front Line Advisory Group | September 2026
The headline: In 2010, 40% of American internet users had gone online for government data in the prior year. By 2015, 65% of all U.S. adults had looked for government information online, and roughly one in three had done so for local government specifically. Since then, digital interactions with local government have grown by double digits year after year, and the number of cities publishing resident-facing data has more than tripled. [1] [2] [3] [6]
A decade ago, the open question was whether anyone would look. Cities that stood up performance dashboards and open-data portals in the early 2010s did so largely on faith: the theory was sound, but there was little evidence residents would actually use them. That question has now been answered. Across national surveys, vendor benchmarks, and the analytics cities publish about their own portals, the pattern is consistent: constituents are finding, using, and returning to government data online in steadily larger numbers.
No single study tracks “dashboard users” nationally over time. What exists instead is a set of overlapping indicators, each measuring a slightly different thing. Read together, they point in one direction, and it is up.
The numbers: resident use of government data has risen for a decade
|
Indicator |
Earlier |
Later |
Change |
Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Americans going online for government data or information |
40% of internet users (2010) |
65% of all adults (2015) |
+25 pts* |
Pew Research Center |
|
Cities with a platform and process to release data to residents |
18% (2015) |
67% (2021) |
+49 pts / 3.7× |
What Works Cities / Results for America |
|
U.S. cities with adopted open-data policies |
48 (end of 2015) |
97 (end of 2017) |
Doubled in two years |
Sunlight Foundation |
|
Digital form submissions to government (287 agencies) |
485,000 (2023) |
855,000 (2024); +~30% again in 2025 |
+76% in one year |
Granicus |
|
Philadelphia open-data program, cumulative unique visitors |
Launch (2015) |
600,000+ visitors; 4M+ pageviews (2021) |
Engagement up nearly every year |
City of Philadelphia |
Important context: *Pew’s 2010 figure is a share of internet users and its 2015 figure is a share of all adults, so the gap understates the true increase but the two are not strictly comparable. What Works Cities figures describe cities in that network; Granicus figures describe its client base. These are strong indicators of direction, not a census of every municipality or a direct count of dashboard users. [1] [2] [3] [6]
Figure 1. Share of U.S. adults who used online government sources for specific purposes in the prior 12 months, 2014–15. Pew has not repeated this module since, which is why later evidence comes from vendor and city data.
Two national snapshots, five years apart
Pew Research Center’s two open-government studies bracket the early growth. In April 2010, Pew reported that 40% of internet users had gone online for government data in the prior year, with 23% tracking stimulus spending and 22% reading legislation. By its 2014–15 survey of 3,212 adults, 65% of all Americans had used the internet to find government information, 32% had done so for local government specifically, 36% had searched for crime data in their area, and 27% had used government sources to check performance on schools, hospitals, or contracts. [1] [2]
The same survey revealed the opportunity. Only 7% of Americans said their local government shared data “very effectively.” Residents were already looking; most simply were not finding what they wanted. That gap is precisely what the dashboards built over the following decade set out to close. [2]
Demand is now running ahead of supply
Deloitte’s 2023 Digital Citizen Survey found that residents want more than they are getting. Half of Americans said they would prefer to interact with local government online, yet only 23% regularly did so, and 36% reported that the pandemic had permanently increased their digital use of government. The preference is well ahead of the experience, which is another way of saying the audience is waiting. [4]
Where governments do provide digital access, residents use it in growing volume. Granicus, whose platforms serve several hundred U.S. governments, reported digital form submissions climbing from 485,000 in 2023 to 855,000 in 2024, then rising nearly 30% again in 2025. Its 2026 benchmark counted 5.35 million residents visiting government engagement sites in a single year, with 1.5 million actively engaging and more than 210,000 completing surveys or feedback submissions. [5] [6]
Cities can see it in their own analytics
Philadelphia offers one of the clearest multi-year usage records. By 2021 the City reported more than 600,000 unique visitors and more than 4 million pageviews on its open-data program since 2015, with unique-user engagement increasing in nearly every year. Philadelphia now publishes a public dashboard tracking the metrics of its own open-data program. [7]
New York City’s numbers show how local the audience really is. NYC Open Data recorded 801,291 unique users in fiscal 2024. Sixty-five percent of U.S. users were in New York State, and 91% of those were in the five boroughs. These are not primarily out-of-town developers or academics; they are residents looking at their own city’s data. [8]
Supply has scaled to meet the audience
The number of governments publishing resident-facing data has grown even faster than the audience. Within the What Works Cities network, the share of cities with a platform and process to release data to residents rose from 18% in 2015 to 67% in 2021, and the share engaging residents around goals and communicating progress rose from 19% to 70%. The Sunlight Foundation counted 97 U.S. cities with adopted open-data policies by the end of 2017, roughly double the count two years earlier. Michigan, which mandated local dashboards in 2011, already had 79% of its cities publishing performance data to residents by 2012. [3] [9] [10]
That expansion is itself evidence of demand. Local governments do not sustain public dashboards for a decade, across changes in administration and budget cycles, unless constituents and elected officials keep asking for them.
What this means for bond and capital programs
Bond programs are where this trend lands hardest. Voters authorize a defined amount of debt for a defined list of projects, then watch delivery unfold over five to ten years. Every indicator above says a meaningful and growing share of those voters will go online to check on it. The question for program owners is no longer whether residents will look, but what they will find when they do: a live, credible view of budget, schedule, and status, or a PDF from last year.
The programs that answer well treat the dashboard as an accountability instrument, not a communications add-on. That means budget and expenditures, commitments and forecasts, schedules and milestones, project status by location, and a clear line from what voters approved to what has been delivered, all refreshed on a disciplined cadence.
The critical distinction: a dashboard is the output; program controls are the engine. Rising resident traffic raises the stakes on data quality. A visually polished dashboard built on inconsistent schedules or stale budgets does not build trust with a growing audience; it erodes it faster. Reliable public reporting starts with disciplined program management.
The direction is clear
The evidence does not support a single national percentage of constituents who use municipal dashboards. What it does support is more useful: over roughly a decade, the share of Americans going online for government information rose from a minority of internet users to a clear majority of adults; resident digital interactions with local government have grown by double digits annually; individual cities report hundreds of thousands of predominantly local users; and the number of governments publishing resident-facing data has more than tripled.
For capital and bond programs, the practical conclusion is simple. Constituents are showing up for the data. The agencies that meet them with a credible, current, well-governed dashboard will find that transparency is no longer a compliance exercise. It is a trust-building strategy that residents are actively rewarding with their attention.
References
1. Pew Research Center, “Government Online, Part Four: Online Government Data and Information” (April 27, 2010).Source link
2. Pew Research Center, “Americans’ Views on Open Government Data” (April 21, 2015); n = 3,212 U.S. adults, fielded Nov. 17–Dec. 15, 2014.Source link
3. Results for America / Monitor Institute by Deloitte / What Works Cities, “Closing the Data Gap: How Cities Are Delivering Better Results for Residents” (2021).Source link
4. Deloitte, “Digital Citizen Survey” (2023), as reported by StateScoop, “Most people prefer to access government online, but don’t actually do it, survey finds” (April 19, 2023).Source link
5. Granicus, “The State of Digital Government 2025,” as reported by Route Fifty (May 2025).Source link
6. Granicus, “What 30% growth in digital interactions tells us about the future of government service delivery” (March 9, 2026); data from 287 government organizations.Source link
7. City of Philadelphia, “A new way to explore the City’s open data” (Nov. 15, 2021).Source link
8. NYC Office of Technology and Innovation, “NYC Open Data 2024 Report — Open Data by the Numbers” (FY2024).Source link
9. Sunlight Foundation, “Open data policy, participation, and progress: Sunlight Open Cities’ 2017 year in review” (Dec. 21, 2017).Source link
10. University of Michigan Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy, Michigan Public Policy Survey, Fall 2012, Q4e.Source link
Research note: Statistics are drawn from the cited studies and municipal sources. Different studies use different samples, bases, and definitions; figures should be interpreted as indicators of direction rather than a single national estimate of dashboard usage.
