COVINGTON, KY –The City of Covington recently partnered with Northern Kentucky University (NKU) Center for Applied Informatics students to assist the City’s business intelligence program CovStat, generating new insights and information from its data. 

Implemented in 2016, CovStat is the City’s business intelligence program used to harness data and analytics. The City uses this information to make educated and informed decisions so as to best utilize its resources when planning for the future.

Upon partnering with Bradley Metzger’s Business Analytics class, the City’s Manager of Analytics and Intelligence, Dr. Todd Sink, provided data to students on Covington police runs, fire runs and building permits. Students were then tasked to create interactive dashboards that would assist City management gain a deeper understanding of the data. 

From this data, City officials can use this new understanding of information to plan a course of action to increase effectiveness and efficiency in government operations.

Sink stated, “The students’ work on creating interactive visualizations of departmental information is incredibly valuable in helping the City of Covington in its efforts to be a data-driven government. 

“Governing without data is like driving a car blindfolded. When we use data and analytics to make decisions, we take off the blindfolds and are able to improve our government operations and the services we provide. I hope we can continue this partnership with NKU’s Center for Applied Informatics for years to come.”

Thanks to this partnership, both the City and NKU students have benefited, providing quality services to the citizens of Covington, said Sink.

Program Director in Analytics at NKU Bradley Metzger stated, “We strive to bring experiential learning into the college classroom.  Students are more motivated when they work on real problems. They dig deeper into finding solutions and they get practical experience working with the imperfect data from the real world. 

“We are grateful to the City of Covington for sharing data and especially for reviewing the student projects and providing meaningful feedback.”

Information derived from CovStat has been extremely helpful to City departments, providing them with quantitative data to assist in planning for the future and in determining how to best utilize resources.

Chief of Police Bryan Carter stated, “The Covington Police Department is excited to be working with the NKU Informatics Department in exploring new ways to analyze and interpret data. 

“These fresh ideas that are developed by the students and faculty at NKU have been instrumental in determining when and where to deploy police resources.”