Town of Gilbert Bolsters Data Governance While Better Serving the Public

Founded in 1920 and home to more than 280,000 people, Gilbert is the largest town in the United States. Growth in this vibrant community is only expected to continue — Gilbert’s population could reach 330,000 in the next decade, having already increased by 35% since 2015.

Achieving its goal of being the “City of the Future” means the town must anticipate change, create innovative solutions and better help people overall — in part by maximizing its massive amounts of data. 

“In shaping Gilbert's future, we've harnessed the power of data as our compass,” says Gilbert’s Town Manager Patrick Banger. “By leveraging real-time insights across domains — from crime prevention to recycling efficiency and infrastructure maintenance — we make precise, informed decisions that elevate our community's quality of life. Our strategic partnerships are invaluable, empowering us to transform today's information into tomorrow's prosperity. Together, we're not just planning for the future; we're actively crafting it, one data point at a time.”

To deliver on this vision, the Town of Gilbert turned to Snowflake to centralize departmental data, bolster its data governance strategy and enable public-facing dashboards that better serve the community at large.

Keeping a town safe, clean and pleasant to live in is no small task — especially when you’re one of the fastest-growing communities in the United States. For the Town of Gilbert, it means employing more than 1,700 people across 17 departments, and providing approximately 250 lines of service. From waste and recycling pickup to law enforcement and emergency services, there’s a lot to do each day — and a lot of data to manage.

Prior to Snowflake, the Town of Gilbert experienced data silos that sometimes inhibited cross-departmental collaboration. Sensitive personally identifiable information from the police, fire, prosecutor and other departments was difficult to manage. Preparing operational reports involved pulling data from multiple sources and, in some cases, months of data wrangling. Atop all that, responding to data requests from the media and the public was time-consuming. 

Seeking to advance its “City of the Future” initiative, the Town of Gilbert reevaluated its technical landscape and engaged SDG Group, a Snowflake Solution Partner specializing in data and analytics, data governance and AI consulting. With SDG Group’s help, the town built a comprehensive data governance program and supported a performance management initiative focused on treating data as an asset. While designing the town’s successful data governance strategy, SDG Group recommended that Gilbert use Snowflake to unify data source ingestion, department access, data security and governance management.

Yet building, using, and protecting data assets is challenging when each department has its own systems, data and metrics to track. “We needed a modern, cloud-based platform that was secure — something that we could leverage with our Microsoft Azure environment and would allow us to bring in our protected data,” says Kevin Shaw, Data Governance Manager at the Town of Gilbert. “That’s why we chose Snowflake.”

Security and governance are at the core of the Town of Gilbert’s data strategy. The town’s “center of excellence” meetings made it easier to understand departmental data needs, share best practices, gain stakeholder buy-in and encourage a faster migration to the AI Data Cloud. 

“Similar to how Snowflake is an interconnected location where the data exists, the data governance center of excellence is an interconnected location where all the policy exists,” says Aengus Walker, Manager at SDG Group USA.

Snowflake’s ability to work with a wide array of industry-leading technologies allows the town to ingest data from more than 1,100 tables comprising more than 50 data sources, all while upholding security and governance at every turn. Snowflake Horizon’s unified and built-in compliance, security, privacy, interoperability and access capabilities — from role-based access controls (RBAC) to metadata fields to dynamic data masking — have been crucial to advancing the town’s robust data governance strategy. 

“Snowflake Horizon’s RBAC features have been a huge win for us,” Shaw says. “Now for certain data activities, such as preparing to ingest HIPAA-sensitive data into Snowflake, we can ensure the data is ready and accessible to the right people.” These advancements have gone a long way in not just maintaining compliance, but also in building trust with each of the town’s many departments, all knowing their data will remain secure.

Fighting crime today means needing to have near-instant access to data — and the Gilbert Police Department is at the forefront. The department has been monitoring shoplifting thefts in the community by leveraging the dashboards from Gilbert’s data teams, which are powered by data stored in Snowflake. Gilbert PD is using this near real-time information to markedly reduce shoplifting across the town. 

“The Power BI Performance Management Dashboard has been a crucial tool for the Gilbert Police Department to quickly identify locations and times where crimes are occurring, develop strategies to address those crimes, and immediately see the results of those crime-fighting efforts reflected in the dashboard,” says Assistant Police Chief Michael Angstead. “The ability to immediately celebrate wins is a major factor in keeping our staff motivated. There is nothing more gratifying than being able to visually see that your individual efforts moved the needle toward keeping the community safer.”

The Town of Gilbert’s publicly accessible dashboards also provide members of the community and media with timely performance insights across multiple lines of service. 

For example, the town’s “Part One Crimes” dashboard shares data that the Gilbert Police Department uses to track crime trends, allocate resources and plan for the future. Interactive data visualizations enable users to quickly analyze crimes by month, week, time of day and type. Trendlines, heatmaps and filters make it easy for citizens to gain answers without requiring assistance from town employees.

Fig. 1: Gilbert’s “Part One Crimes” dashboard shares data that the police department uses to track crime trends, allocate resources and plan for the future. 

Gilbert’s “Mental Health Calls for Service” dashboard monitors the impact of the Crisis Response Team (CRT), a relatively new police unit that’s equipped with specialized training and resources for mental health crises. “The goal is for CRT to respond to 50% of the mental health calls,” Shaw says. “We’re seeing an uptick and showing a good response for mental health calls for service.”

Fig. 2: Gilbert’s “Mental Health Calls for Service” dashboard monitors the impact of the Crisis Response Team, which is equipped with specialized training and resources for mental health crises.

Public works dashboards provide detailed insights about waste and recycling collection, pothole repairs, sewer inspections and pipe cleaning, graffiti removal and environmental compliance. According to Shaw, “It’s very powerful to provide answers and reassure citizens that we’re listening to them.” 

The general public isn’t the only beneficiary of Gilbert’s performance dashboards. The town’s department leaders rely on a variety of self-service insights to complete annual reviews for fiscal year planning. Supporting employees’ ad hoc reporting needs is also easier. For example, analyzing fire truck responsiveness is as simple as connecting the fire department’s BI tool to Snowflake and running a report — compared to the previous process that required months of data manipulation.

Onboarding additional data sets and departments to Snowflake will help the town further reduce complexity and increase transparency. Deploying more public-facing dashboards is also on the roadmap as more departments join Gilbert’s performance management initiative.

And, it’s no surprise that a town aiming to be the “City of the Future” is interested in Snowflake’s Cortex AI and Document AI features. As AI plays an increasingly important role in the Town of Gilbert’s data strategy, data governance will remain a top priority. “We’re at the forefront of embracing AI and emerging technologies for the public sector,” says Eugene Mejia, Town of Gilbert’s Chief AI Strategy and Transformation Officer. “Democratizing access to data while ensuring we have the right protections is key to unlocking creativity and innovation.”