QuickSight Dashboard

Try Before You Buy

About NDX

NDX (National Digital Exchange) is a government platform that helps public sector organisations discover, evaluate, and adopt digital solutions.

Overview

Learning Artifact: This is a pre-deployed demonstration environment for learning and exploration, not a production-ready product. Use it to understand how AWS analytics services can provide insights into service performance.

Deployed and ready - no setup required. When you request this sandbox, you’ll receive access to pre-configured analytics dashboards that are already populated with sample data and ready to explore.

This QuickSight Dashboard scenario demonstrates how local authorities can use AWS analytics services to create interactive dashboards and reports for monitoring service delivery, tracking KPIs, and making data-driven decisions.

What you’ll explore

This sandbox includes a working implementation using:

Amazon QuickSight - Business intelligence service for creating interactive dashboards and visualisations
Amazon S3 - Data lake storage for raw and processed data
AWS Glue - Data catalogue and ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) jobs for data preparation

In plain English: You’ll explore interactive charts and reports for service performance data - like response times, customer satisfaction, and workload metrics - that update automatically as new data arrives.

Learn More

Before requesting your sandbox, explore the scenario documentation to understand what’s deployed and how to interact with it:

View QuickSight Dashboard scenario details

Getting started

Select “Try this now for 24 hours” above
Accept the Acceptable Use Policy
Receive AWS SSO credentials via email
Access your sandbox environment through AWS Console
Follow the scenario guide to explore the pre-built dashboards and try creating your own visualisations

Why This Matters for Local Government

Modern analytics dashboards can:

Provide real-time visibility into service performance across departments
Enable data-driven decisions with accurate, up-to-date metrics
Support transparency by making performance data accessible to stakeholders
Identify trends early so issues can be addressed before they escalate

This scenario lets you evaluate whether cloud-based business intelligence could improve your council’s reporting capabilities.

Constraints

Budget limit: $50 maximum spend (sufficient for extensive exploration)
Duration: 24 hours from activation
Purpose: Evaluation only (non-production use)
No cost to you - the budget is provided by NDX:Try

Important Notes

Resource Lifecycle Warning: All resources in your sandbox will be automatically deleted when your session time expires OR when the budget limit is reached (whichever comes first). Do not store important data in this environment.

Before your session ends

Export any dashboard designs or configurations you want to keep
Take screenshots of visualisations you find useful
Document any insights about capabilities and limitations
Note which data sources would be needed for your real use case

How this was built

This scenario is built with open source infrastructure as code. You can view the CloudFormation template, understand how it works, and adapt it for your own needs.

View the source code on GitHub (opens in new tab)

Build your own

After exploring this pre-deployed scenario, use the Empty Sandbox to build your own solution from scratch. The Empty Sandbox gives you a clean AWS environment where you can experiment freely.

Explore more scenarios

Empty AWS Sandbox - Start fresh with a clean AWS environment
Council Chatbot - AI-powered resident services
Smart Car Park - IoT-based real-time monitoring
Planning AI - Intelligent document analysis

Troubleshooting

Try button not working? Make sure you’re signed in to NDX
Did not receive credentials? Check your spam folder, or wait a few minutes
Cannot access the scenario? Ensure you’re using the correct AWS region (us-east-1)
Budget exhausted early? Some services have higher costs - contact support if unexpected

Support

For technical issues during your sandbox session, contact the NDX team at ndx@dsit.gov.uk.