What happened to Albuquerque’s public transparency tool tracking encampment responses? After CityDesk contacted the city about the frozen transparency tool, officials not only acknowledged the problem but created an entirely new dashboard with current data, delivering on their promise to restore it by “end of day”.
Albuquerque’s original “Encampment Reports & Responses” dashboard, launched in 2024 to show real-time data on camp clearings, hadn’t been updated since Jan. 1. Mayor Tim Keller said the city clears about 200 encampments a week, leaving thousands of actions unreported until the outage came to light.
On Sept. 10, a city spokesperson said the dashboard would be restored “by end-of-day.” Lo and behold, the city delivered, unveiling a new Tableau version of the dashboard, published the same day, that shows data through August and promises, “this map is updated as data is available.”
Rather than just fixing the old system, officials built an entirely new dashboard with more than 35,000 encampment responses mapped by location and the responding department. The original dashboard had shown data only through Jan. 1, leaving the entire year unreported until now.
“The City of Albuquerque is committed to transparency and ensuring the public has access to timely and accurate information,” a city spokesperson said. “We acknowledge that the Encampment Dashboard on the city’s website had not been updated, which was due to staffing transitions within the Department of Technology and Innovation (DTI).”
City staff found the problem earlier this summer and DTI started fixing it, according to the spokesperson. But the team encountered complications with how the dashboard was originally set up, which required major backend work to get the data “properly and reliably integrated moving forward.”
The city launched the dashboard in early 2024 to deliver “continual” mapping of encampment responses and locations to help provide “the best public services,” according to the city website. When launched, then-city spokesperson Katie Simon told Source NM the tool would help “the public understand a little bit more about what we’ve got going on every day.”
The gap left residents without access to any updated encampment response data for most of the year. At about 200 encampments cleared weekly, city crews conducted thousands of encampment responses without public tracking until the new dashboard launch.
The new dashboard shows the full scope of the city’s encampment responses, tracking more than 35,000 actions. Solid Waste handles the bulk, with 11,650 responses, followed by Albuquerque Community Safety with 7,080, Planning Department with 6,637 and Parks and Recreation with 2,814. The interactive map plots thousands of locations, giving residents a clear view of where and how departments are coordinating their efforts.
“While the dashboard was temporarily out of date, the city continued tracking encampments through multiple departments’ coordinated efforts,” the spokesperson said. “That work never stopped.” The new system promises regular updates, stating, “This map is updated as data is available.”
The city said it has implemented safeguards “to ensure regular updates continue without interruption, regardless of staffing changes” and built “several enhancements aimed at improving usability, data clarity, and transparency” into the new dashboard.
Available on the city’s Shelter Resources and Encampment Transparency page, it delivers comprehensive transparency with detailed mapping, departmental breakdowns, and response totals. The new system provides residents with unprecedented access to encampment response data across the city.