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An analytics platform that measures the impact of Barcelona's youth services network across its ten districts.

Joves de Barcelona is Barcelona City Council's network of information and guidance points for young people, present in the city's ten districts. It offers information, advice (academic, employment, housing, entrepreneurship, mobility), training activities and specific programmes. Its application records tens of thousands of interactions a year, and the Council needed to measure the impact of each service with data.

Industry
Public sector, local government
Services
Data and dashboards
Technologies
Power BI, Power Query, Procesos ETL, SharePoint
Joves de Barcelona, Ajuntament de Barcelona: An analytics platform that measures the impact of Barcelona's youth services network across its ten districts.
Joves de Barcelona, Ajuntament de Barcelona logo

The challenge

The application recorded enquiries, advice sessions and activities, but there was no analytical layer to exploit them. Teams depended on manual extractions, scattered sheets and repetitive cleaning for every quarterly and annual report.

The data was also of uneven quality: inconsistent text, special characters in centre names, multi-value fields and different structures for each type of service. A system was needed that centralised the sources, normalised automatically and put the indicators within reach of every team.

Our approach

We unified the registration application, service planning in Google Docs, a central SharePoint repository and a configuration Excel with the dimensions. Every report works on the same version of the data.

The scripts prepare the data for enquiries, advice, activities and specific programmes: they fix encodings and special characters, normalise categories, correct wrong classifications and apply each programme's own logic.

A second layer in Power BI types the dates, creates shared dimensions (gender, age, area, format, school term) and unpivots the records so they can be cross-referenced. The relationships between facts and dimensions ensure every report filters the same way.

They include a ratings module (average score per activity, service and thematic block, and the evolution of satisfaction). When the scripts run, the data is published to SharePoint and a refresh updates every report from any device, with no manual step.

  1. 01.

    Integration of the four sources into one flow

  2. 02.

    Automated normalisation

  3. 03.

    Data modelling in Power Query

  4. 04.

    More than 15 reports with automatic refresh

Architecture

The building blocks of the system and how data flows between them.

01Sources

  • ApplicationCSV exportTransformationCSV
  • SharePointCentral repositoryTransformationReferences

02Normalisation

  • TransformationScheduled jobsPower Query + DAXNormalized

03Modelling and delivery

  • Power Query + DAXModellingPower BIModel
  • Power BI+15 reports, Refresh

The impact

The extraction, cleaning and preparation that consumed hours at every quarterly close are gone. The report is ready when the team opens it.

All ten districts share a unified view of the network, accessible to every local team from any device.

By service, team, district, school, activity type, gender, age and month. Each programme has its own report, adapted to its recording logic.

New programmes, services or data sources join the same flow without starting over.

The relationship did not end when it went live. We keep working with the team on an ongoing basis, extending the reports according to what each service needs to measure.

  1. 01.

    An end to manual closes

  2. 02.

    Impact visible to every team

  3. 03.

    Analysis that was not possible before

  4. 04.

    A base ready for the coming years

  5. 05.

    After delivery

Project results

  • Interactive Power BI reports, one per service and programme

    +15

  • Barcelona districts with a single view of the network

    10

  • Data sources integrated and normalised automatically

    4

Let's talk.

Book a call

A first call with our team to see whether we are a fit. If we are, a closed proposal in days. info@laketab.com