Shawnee Fire Department to launch online dashboard in push for transparency

In the name of transparency, the Shawnee Fire Department is launching an online platform for residents to see exactly what local firefighters are up to.

Now that the Shawnee Fire Department is halfway through its 2016-2021 strategic plan, feedback from the public has been abundantly clear: Residents want more transparency.

Sal Scarpa, deputy fire chief, said the push for transparency is a direct response to the department’s last collection of public input in 2015, which led to development of the online dashboard.

“We’re not very good at telling our story,” he said. “They wanted to know more. And so this next piece that we’re going to do on the dashboard is a direct response to that.

“We’re hoping that our dashboard provides them a good deal of information about what your department’s doing: Performance measures, response times, number of calls, types of calls. All those types of things will be out there.”