The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, aka the “Boston Fed”, is one of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks that make up the central banking system of the United States. Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, the Boston Fed serves the First Reserve District (a grouping of 6 New England states).

Enough of playing tour guide – what does the Boston Fed have to do with enterprise dashboards? Well, thanks to a tip from Dashboard Spy reader Doug Marttila, we have a great example of a Flex Dashboard by the Boston Fed. As Doug says: “It’s cool to see the Federal Bank making dashboards in Flex.”

By the way, Doug Marttila blogs about Data Visualization with Flex and Flash over at forestandthetrees.com and gave us that Election Center flex example.

The folks at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston have put together a fascinating Flex dashboard entitled:

Foreclosures, House Price Changes and Subprime Mortgages in Massachusetts Cities and Towns (Click to launch flex dashboard)

Click image to see large screenshot of dashboard.

It’s a great flex/flash dashboard example, not only because of the compelling subject matter, but because it’s a great way to visualize the progression of the data through the years. By using a slider control that changes the year, you can see the growth and decline of foreclosure rates in the various cities and towns of the state from 1990 through 2007.

Visit the dashboard to see how effective that slider control is. The dashboard can be a bit slow to load sometimes. I’ve provided a video of the bank dashboard here if you don’t want to wait.