Christchurch City Council won the “SuperEngaged” award for its Budget Tool at the Local Government Awards. Photo / Christchurch City Council
Christchurch City Council won the “SuperEngaged” award for its Budget Tool at the Local Government Awards. Photo / Christchurch City Council
Christchurch City Council is trying to make it easier for locals to see how it spends money, and its efforts so far have been rewarded by judges at the recent Local Government Awards.
The council won the “SuperEngaged” award for its Budget Tool, an interactive online platform developed by local company Orbviz. The technology turns the many streams of council spending into colourful bubbles.
The colours represent different spending categories and the size of the bubbles show the proportion of the spend in the total budget. The bigger the bubble, the bigger the investment.
The council’s Smart Christchurch manager Michael Healy said the Orbviz bubble platform helped residents see important information “quickly and effectively”. The organisation had struggled to get residents to engage with its Annual and Long Term Plans for the city.
“Feedback and submissions had dropped significantly, and it was clear a different approach to the one traditionally taken was needed.”
He said with the Orbviz tool submissions on the Annual Plan increased 60 per cent, from 515 last year to 811, this year, and more people were engaging with the report, which was measured by PDF downloads.
A screenshot of Christchurch City Council's online budgeting tool.
“This meant that thousands more people were informed and engaged with the democratic process, telling us their preferences and where they thought we should spend the council’s funds.”
Orbviz co-founder Vanessa O’Brien said there was a need to make the long reports and online dashboards produced by councils and other bodies easier and quicker to understand, and more visually appealing. The company has made similar platforms for the Government’s Budget 2023 and Covid-19.
“We know that people don’t engage with those reports because very few people download them or interact with them, so that was the problem to solve.”
Visually stimulating aesthetics are crucial to holding users’ attention when they visit the platform, and there is evidence backing the appeal of softer-edged graphics – like circles – rather than sharp shapes like squares, she said.
“We had to do something that moves, that’s interactive. There’s a whole science behind bubbles and colourful orbs and how that lights up the brain.”
Co-founder Karim Sabet said a bubble chart created by the New York Times for then-US president Barack Obama’s 2013 budget was the inspiration behind their own budget and spending charts.
The New York Times chart breaks down Obama’s $3.7 trillion in spending into different size bubbles, showing, for example, $1.18 trillion went to health and $875.5 billion was invested in social services.
A similar chart was created for the New Zealand Government’s 2023 Budget. Sabet said it was an easier way to take note of the smaller but interesting things the Government spent money on, such as $3.1 million that was allocated as support for Vietnam veterans for 2024.
“Everybody can understand it. It’s not just people in power or a few people who are CEOs here and there - it’s for everybody.”
