Any tables a user creates can be instantly converted into a number of different charts.įigure 4: UN Country Teams engaged in South-South Cooperation over time Via a dynamic drag-and-drop interface, users can select indicators to cross-reference, sort, and explore. These standardized reports work well for foreseeable data needs and known use cases.įor more complex, undiscovered or niche information requests, the IMS provides a robust ad hoc report builder based on Saiku Business Analytics. Its reporting engine allowed our team to build complex reports (some over 200 pages) that are viewable directly on the web and can be exported pixel-perfect in PDF, Word or Excel format. Pentaho Reporting is a Business Intelligence tool that the IMS uses to create a suite of standard, predefined reports. Thus, the reporting module provides three separate but complementary types of data access: standardized (Pentaho standard reports), dynamic (Saiku Report Builder) and direct (API, exports and downloads). IMS reporting tools draw information from the data entry side of the system and make it available through a range of outlets, which present the data in different technical formats:īecause no single existing tool is able to do everything the IMS needs for reporting, our team chose a combination of existing open source tools that together would serve the broadest number of needs. The end result is a whole suite of reporting options, for flexible data access: In responding to such a wide range of use cases, we focused on choosing the right tools for the job, ensuring we had solid structures in place for reporting on reporting, and using a robust system of filters. On the other hand, being within the UN system meant there were some very specific data asks as well - information to be plugged into reports, data that needed to be cross-referenced or aggregated in accordance with a range of existing reporting mechanisms. On one hand, this is a new database collecting new kinds of information for the first time, so it wasn’t yet clear how the data should be presented or how it would all be used.
In the case of the UN Development Group’s Information Management System (IMS), that last point was particularly challenging - ensuring that the reporting tools could respond to the needs of different kinds of users across the UN. It could contain the lost library of Alexandria, but if no one uses it because it’s confusing or difficult, what purpose does it serve? (If you can answer that, there’s a follow-up question about trees falling in a forest without anyone to hear.)ĭata must be easy to access and easy to understand - and it needs to be both for all the different types of users accessing the system. Time for some real talk: a data management system is only as good as its reporting tools.