Finance, Success-Stories

How the Federal Finance Administration offers the public insight into its data

Together with Datahouse, the Federal Finance Administration has realised a public dashboard portal that makes complex federal finances accessible in an understandable, interactive and multilingual way: an important step towards data-based communication in the administration.

vonLea Rissi

05 Aug 25

The Federal Finance Administration (FFA) manages a wide range of key federal financial data – from tax revenue to expenditure flows. In order to make this information available to the public in a transparent manner, it developed an innovative dashboard solution together with Datahouse.

The result: an interactive portal that visualises complex data in an understandable way and sets new standards in public communication.

Die Startseite gibt einen Überblick über die fünf Kernthemen, die in individuellen Dashboards ausführlich behandelt werden. — *The home page provides an overview of the five core topics, which are covered in detail in individual dashboards.*

The vision

The Federal Finance Administration (FFA) has extensive financial data at its disposal – for example on the distribution of federal revenue, financial equalisation payments and the receipt of subsidies via the cantons.

Journalists, politicians and the general public increasingly require transparent, visualised analyses. Until now, individual enquiries often had to be answered. The idea of making interactive dashboards publicly accessible was born to meet the growing demand.

The challenge

A number of challenges had to be taken into account when developing the portal:

Integrating complex data diversity

The portal had to consolidate a wide variety of federal financial data sources and make them accessible in a consolidated form.

Enabling interactive visualisation

Users should be able to filter data flexibly by time period, region or topic and explore it in a variety of formats such as time series, maps or Sankey diagrams.

Ensuring multiple languages and correct localisation

The dashboards had to be available in all four national languages, including customised number, date and currency formats depending on the language.

Sharing and making access user-friendly

Filter conditions should be shareable via permalinks, e.g. for media releases – and backend access had to be managed securely via the federal government’s IAM.

The solution

Datahouse worked in interdisciplinary teams with the FFA and relied on Apache Superset – an open source business intelligence platform that covers such requirements.

The appropriate chart type was selected for each data set: Time series as lines, source distributions as treemaps, financial flows as Sankey, territorial data as interactive maps.

The dashboards were implemented in multiple languages and connected to the IAM system.

Permalinks have been implemented in such a way that they contain filter states and can be easily shared.

Special features

Permalinks with filter state

Each visualisation can be saved and shared as a link with the currently selected filter state – ideal for media, political communication or internal references.

Versatile chart types

Depending on the type of data, specific visualisations are used: e.g. interactive maps for regional analyses.

Seamless multi-language capability

All dashboards have been fully implemented in German, French, Italian and English – including dynamic formatting of currencies, numbers and dates depending on the language setting.

The advantages: Added value at all levels

The collaboration between the Federal Finance Administration and Datahouse resulted in a solution that offers real added value to the public, the media and political actors:

Transparency

Users receive interactive insights into complex financial data with just a few clicks.

Multiple languages

Dashboards are available in German, French, Italian and English, including localised number formatting.

Sharing

Permalinks enable direct links to precisely filtered visualisations, for example in media releases.

No development costs for core functions

Thanks to Superset as an open source basis, individual requirements could be realised efficiently.

Success

With the Datahouse portal, the Federal Finance Administration has made its database publicly accessible and visually appealing – simple, multilingual and interactive.

The dashboards offer journalists, politicians and all interested parties quick insights and download options.

In this way, the FFA makes previously fragmented data utilisation transparent, modern and sustainably accessible.

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