Dashboards for Public and Private Sector Use

Dashboards seem to be all the rage these days and it's easy to understand why. In a world where instant and voluminous information is the standard, data dashboards allow users to take in a large amount of data in a short amount of time. My own company recently developed a new Dashboard tool because that seems to be where basic data analysis is headed. But a quick Google search on "data dashboards" reveals a myriad of tools and articles for various dashboard solutions. One question I'd like to pose is what makes for a good data dashboard and how can that be used in the context of an overall performance management program? Can dashboards be used to better inform an agency on performance? I'll follow up with a few postings on this topic but I look forward to any comments.