An assignment that Brita Andercheck gave her students pushed her into a new career. The former sociology professor at Southern Methodist University asked her class to propose solutions to some of society’s biggest challenges. Walking across the quad after hearing her students’ presentations, she wondered, “Shouldn’t I try?” She decided to see if she could make a difference. “I quit my job teaching—a job I loved—because I wanted to try to work on big problems,” she says. Now, Andercheck leads the Office of Data Analytics and Business Intelligence for the City of Dallas as director and chief data officer. (Her role does not involve cybersecurity.)
She started out in the city’s Transportation Department, working with engineers to perform crash analysis. “They needed someone to help them start thinking about their data,” she says. The group sifted through KPIs around intersection geometry, signal timing, and more to recommend infrastructure changes. With Andercheck’s insight, the team was able to help reduce auto fatalities. “The City of Dallas has brought in over $65 million in Highway Safety Improvement Program grants to make changes at intersections where they know they’ve got a crash problem,” Andercheck says.
The city then applied her approach to crime, helping the mayor’s office analyze street lighting to provide better public visibility and sight lines for police. “Little by little, we were able to use data to make decisions,” Andercheck says.
Shortly after, she was called into the city manager’s office. She asked which project binder to bring and was told “just your brain.” Prepared for the worst, she walked in to find a friendly face. “The city manager said, ‘Brita, I want to do what you’re doing in transportation with data city-wide. I want every department to use data like this and to make decisions,’” she recalls. At the end of the meeting, in October 2020, the Office of Data Analytics and Business Intelligence was born with Andercheck at the helm.
In its first year, the department grew to a 28-person team and developed 50 data-driven dashboards, apps, interactive maps, and more for the city. Each project addresses equity across several variables. “People think, ‘There are bad areas of town.’ It’s never that simple. We think it’s about using more data to be smarter about where you’re implementing your solutions and not always assuming that one location probably needs a little bit of everything,” she says.
Andercheck’s team partnered with the city’s Office of Equity and Inclusion to release an equity impact assessment and recently unveiled a new crime data dashboard in collaboration with the Dallas Police Department. Her team also partnered with leaders to reduce the amount of identifying information in police reports. “We need people to feel that they can call the police, and if they think that we’re going to put up their personal information, they might not do that,” Andercheck explains.
Morving forward, she is collaborating with DPD, the District Attorney, nonprofit partners, and other agencies to raise awareness about the magnitude of human trafficking in our community and track the city’s progress in fighting it. Additionally, Andercheck is helping the city aggregate and publish permitting statistics and adding a data tool to an equity-driven bond that will be released in 2025.
A big focus is trying to provide policy levers to pull for officials who want to create change. “You can have the coolest-looking chart in the world, but we’ve got to be focused on the impact on people because that is what we all are really here for,” Andercheck says.
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