The council has spent £20,000 on a new platform to give residents and journalists access to data on how the council is performing against key targets.

Visitors to performance.westsussex.gov.uk will be able to view progress against the targets, which relate to services for children and older people, as well as the economy.

Council leader Louise Goldsmith said: “Moving from paper to digital and giving residents the opportunity to see our performance at the same time as we do opens our accountability and gives us a very visual way of explaining how and what we’re doing for our residents and communities, where and how we are spending the council tax. It’s very much in line with our agenda to be more transparent and open.”

She added that the platform would provide an “honest focus” to areas where the council is not delivering effectively, which would help it to improve performance.

The platform, named GovSat, has been developed by Socrata, a Seattle-based software company.

Socrata’s existing clients include the World Bank, Kenya, the United Nations Development Programme, the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services, USAID, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the City of New York.

The firm's director of GovStat, Beth Blauer, said: “Governments have no excuse for keeping citizens, and even their own departments, in the dark. The era of open government has arrived and it’s here to stay.”