In November, Advisory Board staff introduced a new tool to help Advisory Board members abreast of on-going MWRA budget analysis. The CEB Dashboard is a collection of summary tables and data visualizations that seek to provide quick and intuitive understanding of the key budget performance indicators and the opportunity to explore them further.
Each month this dashboard will be updated with the latest figures and analysis.
In the upper left-hand corner is a familiar table from the Proposed FY 25 Comments and Recommendations. This table provides the current year-to-date budget for Direct and Indirect cost centers, actual expenses and the variance between those two amounts expressed in absolute dollars and as a percentage of the budget.
Cell shading is used to indicate cost centers with the greatest variation from the budgeted amounts. The darker the shading, the greater the absolute variation.
The right-hand side of the Dashboard is dedicated to visualizing the data behind the two cost centers with the greatest variances at the time of analysis.
An aging workforce along with low national and regional unemployment has presented a multi-year challenge to the MWRA and one that the Advisory Board has consistently noted in its Comments & Recommendations. Thus the upper right-hand side of the Dashboard will be dedicated for visualizing both the deviation in staffing from budget targets (top) as well as the resulting underspending in salaries and fringe benefits (bottom).
The lower right-had portion of the dashboard is where drivers for the cost center with the next greatest absolute variance will be graphicly explored. In the first quarter of FY 25 it was Maintenance.
A narrative table accompanies this chart, to offer explanations for these budget variances
Finally, in the lower left-hand portion of the dashboard is a summary of the CEB in terms of total dollars and a radial chart displaying the budget by expense categories.
