What was built A comparative governance decision-support dashboard classifying 190+ countries by electoral system type — verified against 5–6 independent sources per country, structured with rigorous data validation, and published as a live interactive ArcGIS Experience Builder tool for policymaker education and electoral reform advocacy.
Who it was for ProRep Coalition's development officers and electoral reform advocates — using the tool in policymaker meetings and stakeholder presentations where the accuracy of global electoral classification directly supported reform arguments.
Why it mattered In a political context, a wrong classification isn't a cosmetic error — it's misinformation. The spatial output had to be accurate enough to withstand expert scrutiny from the stakeholders and policymakers it was designed to inform.

The Challenge

A dashboard being used to educate policymakers about democratic reform has a higher data quality bar than a standard GIS project. Every country classification carries an implicit comparative argument — and the advocates relying on this tool would deploy it in front of stakeholders who would push back. The classification had to be accurate enough to withstand that scrutiny, at scale, across 190+ countries. That meant establishing the analytical framework before any data touched a GIS tool: what categories exist, how edge cases get handled, what happens when authoritative sources disagree.

Once the classification framework was solid, the data was structured in Excel — new fields created, each country populated field by field, every disputed classification documented and resolved. Only after that did the work move into GIS: country boundary shapefile sourced from OpenStreetMap, attributes joined, topology checked, then validated country by country for completeness and consistency. The dataset moved into ArcGIS Online only after data integrity was confirmed.

The dashboard was designed for a specific audience: people who care about democratic governance, not GIS. That meant custom pop-up imagery designed in Photoshop, clean symbology with a clear legend, and interactive elements that reward exploration without requiring technical knowledge. The result is publicly accessible, live, and used to support electoral reform advocacy and comparative governance analysis.

"I don't open ArcGIS until the data is right. For 190 countries, that meant five or six sources each — and not moving forward until every classification held up."

Process

  1. 1
    Research Identified 5–6 authoritative sources per country; resolved conflicts; built classification framework for 8 electoral system types.
  2. 2
    Data Prep Structured all 190+ countries in Excel; created and populated new attribute fields; handled edge cases and disputed classifications.
  3. 3
    GIS Work Joined attributes to world boundary shapefile; verified topology; validated every country; designed symbology and pop-ups.
  4. 4
    Output Published live ArcGIS Online dashboard; custom Photoshop pop-up imagery; publicly accessible.
Principle 01
Structure before software

The methodology — classification framework, source reconciliation, field design — has to be settled before any data touches a GIS tool. Software doesn't fix a bad framework. It just executes it faster.