State of Maine Sees Labor Improvement in Data

The State of Maine's Department of Labor has taken transparency to a new level. Not only are they making information on unemployment, education and more available online, they're doing it visually and interactively.

After seeing some of the great visualizations they have on their website, I called Chris Boudreau, Director of the Center for Workforce Research & Information at the Maine Department of Labor.

"We've been doing it well over a year," he said of the visuals. "We were paying a vendor for our database on our website. We didn't get much control and nothing visual. We have tons of data, so we looked for something more interactive, more visual, and that would eliminate our IT department from the mix."

They're now using Tableau Public Premium to serve up all their data.

Take a closer look at some of the visualizations. They're highly interactive: the one shown above lets you choose the rates you want to view and the time period. In this one you can select whether to view by a table, a bar chart or pies.

Chris says they're even saving money, saving $40k a year after switching from their database vendor to Tableau Public Premium.