Public Sector Shiny Showcase: Government Agencies Worldwide Building Data Science with R, Python, and Shiny

The Public Sector Shiny Showcase is Posit’s curated gallery of interactive Shiny and Quarto applications built by government agencies, statistics offices, and research institutes around the world using R and Python. I introduced it in January, and since then the gallery has grown in a way I find especially rewarding. The showcase now reaches much further than the lineup it launched with, as national statistics offices and research institutes across Europe and Latin America now sit alongside the agencies that started it.

How government agencies worldwide use Shiny

When I wrote the first post in January, the lineup leaned toward agencies I knew well, from the FDA to the California Department of Public Health. The agencies we are adding now have been using R and Python for years. A statistician in Buenos Aires, an economist in Dublin, an analyst in Santiago, and a research team in Brussels have long used these open-source tools to answer questions their citizens care about. Because the languages are open source, their solutions can become another agency's starting point.

National statistics, made open and explorable

• Some of the most thoughtful new work comes from the offices charged with measuring how a country is doing.
• Argentina's national statistics institute, INDEC, publishes its Integrated System of Social Statistics, which presents wellbeing through a capabilities lens so that people can see the state of social progress region by region.
• INDEC also publishes a dashboard on the elderly population, covering aging, activity, and access to care.
• In Ireland, the Central Statistics Office offers a macroeconomic dashboard that lets anyone explore the country's key economic indicators directly.
• And in Chile, the Undersecretariat for Regional Development (SUBDERE) builds the Índice de Brechas de Género, a gender gap index that measures disparities down to the commune level, where local decisions actually get made.

All of them share a willingness to use open-source tools to connect expertise with the many publics they serve, demonstrating generosity and fiscal responsibility, while upholding rigorous research and data science practices.

Surveillance and research in public health

Public health remains one of the richest areas in our gallery, and the new entries showcase it across the Atlantic.

• The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control publishes the European Respiratory Virus Surveillance Summary, a weekly integrated read on influenza, RSV, and SARS-CoV-2 for the EU and EEA and the broader WHO European Region.
• Closer to home, the Kentucky Department of Public Health contributes two apps that show the range of this work: a Transcriptomic Atlas of Nervous System Tumors that opens gene expression data to researchers studying these cancers, and a Public Health Transformation Dashboard that gathers community health assessments from local health departments into one place. 

Transparency and research tools: the UK National Audit Office and the EU Joint Research Centre

A few of the new tools speak directly to transparency and to the careful science behind good policy.

• The UK National Audit Office builds a visual map of the asylum system that shows which bodies are involved, how a claim moves through each stage, and how people are supported while they wait, turning a process that can feel opaque into something a citizen can follow.
• The European Commission's Joint Research Centre publishes a set of tools that bring research methods into the open, including real-time macroeconomic nowcasting for the euro area and the EF3.1 Ecotox Explorer, which helps users understand how freshwater ecotoxicity factors were derived from the underlying data.

Why open source fits public service so well

Looking across these apps, I see similar reasons for why R, Python, Shiny, and Quarto are effective for this work.

• Cost-effectiveness: Building on open-source languages lets agencies stand up capable, interactive tools while keeping budgets focused on the mission. Open source can also work great alongside the established platforms a team already trusts, adding new capability rather than forcing a switch.
• Transparency: Trust in government grows when people can see the data for themselves, and apps like Ireland's macroeconomic dashboard or the UK asylum systems map invite users into the data.
• Portability: Because these teams write standard open-source code, the same skills and the same applications work whether the agency sits in Sacramento or Santiago, with no proprietary format and no vendor lock-in holding the work in place.

Common questions

Which government agencies build apps with Posit’s Shiny frameworks for R and Python? Agencies of many kinds, in many countries. The showcase includes national statistics offices such as INDEC in Argentina and Ireland's Central Statistics Office, public health bodies such as the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the Kentucky Department of Public Health, and science agencies such as the U.S. Geological Survey and the European Commission's Joint Research Centre.

Are the apps in the showcase open source? They are built with open-source languages and frameworks, namely R and Python together with Shiny and Quarto, so agencies write standard code that runs anywhere, with no proprietary format and no vendor lock-in. Many of these are hosted on self-managed Posit Connect servers, which is our commercial tool that enables data teams to securely and easily publish their work in government environments that require tight controls and security.

Where can I see the full gallery? The complete, regularly updated collection lives at the Public Sector Shiny Showcase.

An invitation

Before I joined Posit, I worked in government as a data analyst writing R. I worked under shrinking budgets and I still see many of your budgets shrinking. I came to Posit with a simple goal, which was to help make R and Python more accessible in government so that public servants can serve people better and at lower cost. Our open source and commercial tools have proven to be the best solution for quickly, easily, and securely sharing important research findings with decision makers and the public.

To public servants, researchers, and analysts wherever you are doing this work: the Public Sector Shiny Showcase is for you. I hope it offers a spark for your next project and a useful reference for your next proposal.

Want to chat with our public sector experts? Schedule a call with them here, and if I can help in any way, please reach out.