TIGblogs - Ben Warner's TIGBlog

Engaging Dialogue about Community Indicators

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 02:10:00 EDT

We had a great session talking about community indicators at the Community Matters '10 Conference in Denver yesterday. Delia Clark facilitated a panel discussion with Rhonda Phillips, Shanna Ratner, and me as we talked about why community indicators were important and how to use them in creating sustainable community change. While we were talking, highlights of the panel discussion were captured on flipcharts as shown below:

The fun part was that we asked the group for their questions before we started speaking, and filled two flip chart pages with questions. After the short (15 minutes each) presentations we provided, we encouraged the session participants to form small groups and talk with each other about community indicators. They reported out their comments and questions, and we turned the session into open dialogue around indicators. At the end, the panelists each got five minutes to respond to any questions that remained unanswered from the opening list.

All in all, it was a good example of using a civic engagement process to discuss the importance of using community indicators in civic engagement processes.nbsp; Looking forward to using similar processes in other conference sessions. Special thanks to Delia Clark for the facilitation that made it all happen.

Call for Proposals: Integrating Community Indicators and Performance Measures

Thu, 20 May 2010 09:05:00 EDT

The Community Indicators Consortium (CIC), as part of a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is seeking proposals to write "Real Stories" of communities, organizations, and/or jurisdictions that have tried, successfully and not so successfully, to integrate community indicators and organizational performance measures.

The Real Stories project is intended to provide real life examples of the advantages and challenges to both community indicator and organizational performance measurement projects as a result of integrating or linking these two types of efforts. The published Real Stories, from 5-20 pages in length, will be used to advance the knowledge of community indicators-organizational performance measures integration and for training and other outreach material to community leaders as a way to improve or inform decision-making and create measurable, positive change in communities.

We are looking for proposals from individuals and groups who are directly involved in these efforts as well as individuals and organizations that work with community indicator and performance measurement projects. A stipend of $2,000 will be awarded for each Real Stories published.Three-to-five Real Stories will be selected for publication in 2010.

The deadline for submitting proposals for the 2010 Call for Real Stories is June 22, 2010. Notification of selected proposals and guidelines for development will be sent on July 15th. The deadline for the written first draft is September 15, 2010.

Visit the CIC web site for more information about the Real Stories project and the call for proposals. You can also download the Real Stories Proposal submittal form for more details, or contact the Project Steering committee at CIPM@communityindicators.net

Sincerely,

Allen Lomax and Cheryle Broom
Integrating Community Indicators and Performance Measures Co-Chairs

GDP v GNH: The Economist Debates

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 10:04:00 EDT

There's an interesting debate over at The Economist over replacing GDP as a measure of progress with something else, such as a Gross National Happiness index.

You may be interested in watching the debate, seeing the arguments, or voting on the outcome.

Click here for more information.

Seattle Information Technology Indicators Project

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 02:01:00 EST

Since this blog tends to attract people who are both technologically savvy (at least savvy enough to read a blog!) and interested in community indicators, I thought you might want to read about this new effort, the Seattle Information Technology Indicators Project.

The Seattle IT department conducted city-wide surveys and focus groups in order to understand how well they're doing in creating a "technologically healthy community." This link provides access to their goals, indicators, and reports they've created to answer the question.

I was leading a training session this morning in my community about our new web-based indicators tool and got into an interesting discussion about future indicator sets -- are we thinking now about the things we will need to measure to understand our community in the face of constant, exponential change in so many aspects of society? I don't have an answer to that question yet -- I'll be mulling it over and would love your inputs -- but what they're doing in Seattle is likely an important step in rethinking community visions and the indicators we need to be measuring.

Hat tip: Jonl via twitter

New U.S. Gross National Happiness Index Implemented!

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:10:00 EDT

We've talked about Bhutan's Gross National Happiness Index before. Now we have a Gross National Happiness Index for the United States, updated on a daily basis, brought to us free ... by Facebook.

Here's how it works:

Every day, millions of people share how they feel with the people who matter the most in their lives through status updates on Facebook. These updates are tiny windows into how people are doing. They're brief, to the point and descriptive of what's going on this week, today or right now. Grouped together, these updates are indicative of how we are collectively feeling. Measuring how well-off, happy or satisfied with life the citizens of a nation are is part of the Gross National Happiness movement. When people in their status updates use more positive words--or fewer negative words--then that day as a whole is counted as happier than usual. (To protect your privacy, no one at Facebook actually reads the status updates in the process of doing this research; instead, our computers do the word counting after all personally identifiable information has been removed.)

The New York Times quotes Adam D. I. Kramer, the creator of the index, as saying: “When people in their status updates use more positive words — or fewer negative words — then that day as a whole is counted as happier than usual.”

Adam explains the methodology for the index in this Facebook blog post. Check it out and see what you think.

(Hat tip: ISQOLS)

Mad Props to Tad Long!

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 05:10:00 EDT

I'm at the 2009 Community Indicators Consortium Conference in Bellevue, Washington. I'll be sharing my notes on the sessions shortly.

But I had to applaud Tad Long from NewCity Morehead for concluding his presentation by going to his website and showing how his presentation, report, and template were online and waiting for us, collected on a page for conference attendees.

Two quick thoughts from his presentation:

measuring results has to go beyond usual ways we measure
engaging citizens needs to go beyond the traditional ways we have brought people together

www.newcities.org

I'm going to be spending more time comparing their community engagement scorecard with the Indicators of Civic Health project we did with the National Civic League back in 2002. I like how many of the same themes have been develloped further.

Way to represent!

JCCI Releases New Indicators Website

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:09:00 EDT

I'm excited to announce that we at JCCI have finally launched our own interactive web-based indicators portal!

Come visit our new site at www.jcci.org, click on "Indicators", and you'll see three options for accessing our local/regional indicator sets:

Our Quality of Life Progress Report, begun in 1985 and updated annually since then, in our traditional PDF format;
Our Race Relations Progress Report, which reports on our community's progress in eliminating race-based disparities across six elements of the Quality of Life, a project launched after a 2002 community-based study and informed by a fascinating 1946 precursor report; and
Our new Community Snapshot, which lets you select indicators and see the data displayed simultaneously on a map and time-series trend lines and quintile comparisons and more.

The Community Snapshot is powered by InstantAtlas, which is a pretty neat software package. John Bartholomew from GeoWise, the company that produces the software, will be at the CIC Conference demonstrating what they've put together.

We're just launching our effort, and right now we've only included one mapping template and state/regional/county-level data for our indicators. Phase II of our community indicators reporting will take many of these indicators down to a neighborhood level, and then allow us to do some interesting performance evaluation work with community targets.

In the meantime, here's your chance to take a look and give me some feedback!

Ola Rosling at Gov 2.0 Summit

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 02:09:00 EDT

The Gov 2.0 Summit was held September 9-10 in Washington, D.C. Much of what was talked about is highly interesting, especially as we think about new ways for civic engagement, transparency, performance measurement, and the like.

One of the speakers was Ola Rosling, who is Dr. Hans Rosling's son who works at Google. He takes us into the world of GapMinder and some of the new data sets and tools available for us to use, and what some of the take-aways might be from that data visualization. (Favorite quote: "A static image is lying, because the world changes.")

Enjoy!

"Bending the Curve" Under Attack

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 04:09:00 EDT

Constrained curmudgeons among us have risen up in opposition to the phrase "bending the curve." William Safire writes in the New York Times that

Came the current recession, the graphic-metaphor crowd stopped worrying about a cost line bending inexorably upward and directed its attention to the need to get the upward-bending unemployment figures bending down. Thus, the meaning of the phrase bending the curve is switching from “bend that awful, upward-curving line down before we can’t afford an aspirin” to “bend that line up down quick, before we all head for the bread line!” This leads to metaphoric confusion. It’s what happens when you fall in love with full-color graphs to explain to the screen-entranced set what’s happening and scorn plain words.

Next we turn to Benjamin Zimmer at Language Log (which is a fascinating place to wander through, especially when one wants to experience the same blank-eyed sensation that too many in our communities have when they ogle our data.) Zimmer says,

The idea that the rise of something undesirable can be altered by "bending the curve" has been around for quite a while.

He cites a number of examples, suggesting that the phrase is not of such recent origin (or due to such nefarious pandering to policy-justification-through-optics-rather-than-words) as denounced by Safire. However, Zimmer's readers shudder at the use of the phrase.

I wonder how they would feel about the casual way I bat about the term "trend-bending"?

Stiglitz Op-Ed in the Guardian

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:09:00 EDT

Thought you might also enjoy reading this.

Kurt Metzger on Metromode

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 08:09:00 EDT

Kurt Metzger is a guest blogger on Metromode. Check it out!

Music, Literature, and College Performance

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 01:09:00 EDT

Sometimes we bring up creative indicators that strike our fancy for their unusual use of data to tell an interesting story. This isn't necessarily to suggest that these measures would be great community indicators -- we're not going to add "boxers or briefs" to our community survey any time soon -- but the way in which these measures are constructed can maybe set us thinking about how else we could measure key trends in our own communities outside of the more standard data sets.

The following data set provides that kind of out-of-the-milk-crate thinking. In Music That Makes You Dumb, Virgil Griffith at CalTech examined Facebook data to see what music college students were listening to. In Books That Make You Dumb, he did the same thing (but with books, not music.) (You probably figured that one out without me.)

He took Facebook network stats from 1,352 schools and the top music/books that their students listed as their favorites, and then mashed that data up with average SAT/ACT scores fro those schools, to get a correlation between music or book choices and IQ. (Yes, it's correlation and not causation. He says that a number of times.)

But check out the results -- you can look up your own school and see what the favorites are and how they rank, or you can look up you favorite music/books and see where they are.

Any way you slice it, it's an interesting data set. And you might see a book or a musical group you may want to try out.

Increased smartness or improved SAT scores not guaranteed.

Recession Metrics: Underwear and Donuts

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:08:00 EDT

For an interesting look at key indicators of economic well-being, see this article from TIME Magazine's Brad Tuttle. In it, he refers to this Washington Post graphic/article on an Underwear Index, showing that as times get tough, men wear underwear longer and the sales of this clothing necessity dip.

Tuttle also (in another blog article) highlights the things we buy more of during a recession.

It's another creative indicator set ... but I don't think we'll be using this indicator in our community reports any time soon.

Please keep sending me the interesting metrics you find out there!

(Hat tip goes to Elaine Pace)

Using Data for Advocacy: Jacksonville's Nonprofits Make a Stand

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:08:00 EDT

Thanks to Abel Harding and his JaxPoliticsOnline blog for this video of yesterday's press conference at City Hall, where local nonprofits used data to make their case that city funding for nonprofits not be slashed during these difficult financial times.

I thought you might enjoy the different ways the numbers are presented and displayed -- comparisons to familiar terms, straight-up statistics, visual representations of the numbers, and more.

Any thoughts?

Award Nominations Sought

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:08:00 EDT

Call for Nominations:
Community Indicators amp; Performance Measures Integration Awards

The Community Indicators Consortium is inviting nominations of efforts to integrate community indicator and performance measurement projects (US or international) that best demonstrate the development and application of integrating these two forms of measurement to advance sustainable change in their communities and the power of this integration to drive that change.

The purpose of the Awards Program is to

recognize the collaborative efforts among community stakeholders to integrate community indicators-organizational performance measures projects and the people who made it happen and
add to the public body of knowledge about community indicator-organizational performance measurement integration promising practices.

Nominations are due by midnight, Wednesday, August 26, 2009. For more information about the awards, the awards criteria, and how to apply, please visit the Community Indicators-Performance Measurement section of the Community Indicators Consortium website.

Allen Lomax and Cheryle Broom
CI-PM Steering Committee Co-Chairs
CIPM@communityindicators.net
Community Indicators Consortium

Data Update: Annie E. Casey Releases 2009 KIDS COUNT

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:07:00 EDT

The Annie E. Casey Foundation has just released the 2009 KIDS COUNT Data Book.

From their website:

Counting What Counts: Taking Results Seriously for Vulnerable Children and Families: The 20th annual KIDS COUNT Data Book profiles the well-being of America’s children on a state-by-state basis and ranks states on 10 key measures of child well-being. The Data Book essay calls for a “data revolution” that uses timely and reliable information to track the progress and improve the lives of vulnerable children.

Also go to their datacenter for another way to access the data.

Are your Community Indicators making a difference?

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:06:00 EDT

Yesterday I led a lunchtime conversation via webinar on the question, Are your community indicators making a difference? The webinar was sponsored by the Community Indicators Consortium and was a members-only event, and I know several dozen of you were disappointed in not being able to attend. I thought I'd summarize my notes for both the attendees and those who missed the event, and continue the conversation. (Plus you ought to join CIC to not miss out on their next webinar!)

For the webinar, I'm speaking from the experience of an organization that is currently working on its 25th annual community indicators report. We've seen a generation of community leaders who have stepped into leadership roles that have always had our indicator reports there to guide them. Along the way, we've learned a little bit (through many trials and lots of errors!) about how to tell if your indicators are being effective.

I tried to organize my remarks this way:

One topic: Measuring the effectiveness of your indicators project

Two key questions: Who is your intended audience and what are your intended results?
Three meta issues: Design, Timing, and Source

Five areas to measure results

(I know there's no four. Feel free to chime in with what I missed.)

Let's jump to the two key questions: intended audience and intended results. Defining your audience is not easy work, but it is critical forthe rest of the discussion. Are you producing your indicators for elected officials? For public officials (the non-elected ones behave differently than those who need to campaign for their positions)? For community activists? For statisticians and data professionals? For chambers of commerce and business groups? For United Ways, community foundations, or other funders of non-profits? For grantwriters? For non-profit organizations and service providers? For everyday citizens? For students? For the media?

You may want everyone to use your indicators. I know the world would be a better place if everyone read and internalized every report I produce. But who is/are your primary audience?

And what do you want them to do with the indicators? Possible intended results include:

Inform/ educate/ raise awareness
Build shared priorities
Shape decision-making
Influence budget allocations
Define public policy
Inspire action
Demand accountability
Measure performance/outcomes

And there are more possibilities. Before we can deal with the big question -- are your indicators making a difference -- we have to be able to answer these two key questions -- who do you want to do what with your data.

In my organization in Jacksonville, the question of indicator effectiveness is driven by a Model of Community Improvement. It's our "theory of change" that explains why we do indicators and what we hope to accomplish with them. I'll include the model below:

Briefly, we suggest that change begins when we identify what change we want -- we create a vision for the future, based on our shared values in a community. (I know we like to think data are objective, but every indicator we include in our reports is a value judgement, as is every include we don't include. Every desired direction in a trend line is a value judgement. Go ahead and begin by articulating the values, instead of assuming implicit agreement on them.)

In order to know where we are as a community in relationship to that vision, we develop indicators. These community indicators then help us determine where we are falling short, what our priorities for action are, and inform the research, planning, and strategizing processes. The indicators themselves don't tell us what to do -- they are descriptive, not prescriptive. They do tell us where we need to do something, and we suggest that indicators be accompanied by planning processes to determine what to do about the indicators that fall short of our desired expectations.

Plans require action, which is the next step in the model. If we can act ourselves, we do so; if we need to convince others to act, then advocacy is required to get the desired actions.

Actions have consequences; the outcomes or results of those actions then need to be assessed to see if they achieved the desired results. Here is where our indicators come into play again -- are we closer to where we want to be? Based on the indicators, we can determine if we need to reshape our vision, adjust what we're measuring, or go back to the drawing board and develop new plans.

Indicators play two critical roles in our model for community change -- they identify priorities for action, and they assess the results of that action. In order to measure the effectiveness of our indicators, then, we measure how well they serve both of those functions.

This isn't the only possible theory of change, of course. Yours might be quite different. But detemining indicator effectiveness has to include some thinking about the model you're using in applying those indicators. Why are you measuring indicators? What difference do you want your community indicators to make?

That moves us from our two key questions to our three meta issues: design, timing, and source.

By design, I mean simply presenting the information so that your intended audience can use it to achieve the intended results. We don't think about design that way, I'm afraid. We look at what looks cool, what our peers are accomplishing, and what we like to see. We want to present our data in the most impactful way possible -- but many times, we're thinking about what is most impactful to us. And we tend to be different than our targeted audiences.

Elected officials, for example, tend to want the information presented clearly on one printed page in their hand when they need it. Researchers want more detail. Grantwriters need different kids of data break-outs. Regular citizens need something that's not so intimidating and doesn't make them feel like they're back in math class. Your design has to meet the needs of your audience in a way that allows and encourages them to use the information to achieve the desired outcomes. (On the webinar, I shared a quick succession of a series of indicator reports, both print and web-based, to show the wide variety out there. If you've been reading this blog, you've seen the examples and many more. Not every report needs to look alike -- but to work, they have to meet the intended audience where they are!)

By timing, I mean three things: time of year, update frequency, and data relevancy. The report needs to coincide with the decision cycles it hopes to influence, and the information in it needs to be current enough to influence action. For example, one of our intended audiences is our local United Way's resource allocation team. They need the information in our report to inform their decisions in allocating money to different programs. The report needs to be available before they meet, but not too far before they meet because the information in the report needs to be as current as possible. They make decisions on an annual basis, so to institutionalize the indicators in the decision-making cycle the indicators need to be updated annually. If your indicators are out of sync with your intended audience, they won't be used to achieve your intended results -- they become an interesting curiosity, not a decision necessity.

By source, I'm talking about who you are as an organization. When you publish your indicator report, is it seen as trusted information from a trusted place? Take a moment for some painful introspection. In general, data from advocacy organizations are not trusted by people without a shared belief in the cause. If your mission is to tell people to put children first, and you issue a report with indicators in it that say children should come first, your organization values will cloud the usefulness of that data. Your indicators will not be used by people who don't already believe children should come first.

How open and transparent is your indicator selection process? Who determines which indicators are chosen? Does the community know why you're measuring what you do? How open and transparent is your data review process?

Sometimes we have to choose our role in the community. It is remarkably difficult to be the trusted neutral source for information AND the community advocate for a single position. It almost never works to try to be both.

Once we have dealt with these issues, we can look at how we measure ourselves and the effectiveness of our indicators. There are at least five different areas in which we can look at effectiveness:

Explicit use of indicators in information sharing. By this I mean the number of times your indicators are used by other people (media, public officials, other organizations, your intended audience) in talking about the issue. For example, we have been able to track not just the media coverage of our report releases, but the way the indicators have been used over the course of a year to talk about issues, to justify positions, or to advocate for a cause. If the intended result is to raise awareness, you can track how the indicators are being used for that purpose and how often your reported is cited, linked to, or quoted.
Explicit use of indicators in decision-making. We find in whereas clauses and in public debates the use of our indicators in making key decisions. Sometimes we are asked to present the data to a decision-making body. Sometimes the indicators are cited in justifying decisions. Sometimes people will come to us and thank us for having the indicators available which helped them prevail in a political decision or in receiving a grant. If your intended result is to influence decision-making, track these. We also survey our intended audience and ask them about how they have used the indicators in their decision-making.
Institutionalization of indicators in decision-making. This is where the process of making decisions are built with the data report in mind. This is an important outcome we work towards. This can include policy and budget decision-making, but it can embrace many other things. Our local Leadership Jacksonville program builds its curricula for its four leadership programs with our indicators in mind -- all participants receive a copy of the report, and they are encouraged to use the indicators to better understand the community. Think about who you want to use the indicators, and in what fashion, and then help them design their processes with the indicators as a fundamental/necessary piece of that process. Remember the issue of timing!
Cross-disciplinary/cross-institutional priority-setting and collaboration around identified issues. Your indicators can help set the community agenda. What priorities have you identified? Who has embraced those priorities? More importantly, who has stepped out of their silo or comfort zone to step up to a shared community priority identified by your indicators? In our case, we pay attention when the indicators are used by our Chamber or Mayor to tackle an issue that's not traditionally their focus or responsibility, or when multiple groups join together in a common cause identified by the indicators. That's a desired result, and we note that activity.
Improvements in the indicators themselves. Your measure indicators that you want to improve. They're important, or else you wouldn't measure them. Our model for community improvement demands that we pay attention to what the indicators are telling us -- are we moving closer to the desired goals? If none of your indicators are getting better over an extended period of time, then your report isn't being effective in motivating change.

That's a summary of what we talked about in the webinar. I'm interested in your comments and suggestions to continue to conversation.

Job Opening: Research Analyst/Web Communications Specialist

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:06:00 EDT

MAPC’s Data Services group has an opening for a Research Analyst/Web Communications Specialist. The Data Services Group seeks to utilize information, technology, and tools to inform public policy and drive social change.

Research Analyst / Web Communications Specialist

The Boston Metropolitan Area Planning Council seeks a Research Analyst/Web Communications Specialist for the Data Services Group. The Research Analyst will collect and organize data, conduct analysis, and prepare data for presentation in print and electronic formats, as well as help maintain a public data website. Applicant should have excellent analytic and communications skills and knowledge of emerging Web 2.0 technologies.

This is an opportunity to work in a dynamic, interdisciplinary environment focused on using data and analysis to support regional planning and policymaking.

Primary Responsibilities

Data collection, management, and analysis: Research and obtain updates to MAPC’s existing data sets as they are released from public agencies, the private sector, and other MAPC units. Clean and format data sets and prepare summary reports. Research and identify new data sources and integrate them into MAPC’s data warehouse. Build relationships with other agencies and allied organizations to support ongoing data-sharing.
Manage MetroBoston DataCommon website: Maintain HTML component of MAPC’s online data viewer and web mapper, prepare monthly newsletter, and conduct user trainings.
Lead innovative applications of technology to planning: Keep abreast of best practices for the use of technology in planning and make recommendation for implementation by MAPC. Technologies include, but are not limited to, Internet mapping, data visualization and analysis, public participation technology, and social media.
Other tasks: Respond to email and telephone data inquiries from municipalities and allied organizations. Create databases, forms, and reports as needed by MAPC staff. Assist Data Center staff in presentation of reports and other information, both oral and written.
Perform other duties as necessary

Qualifications
Experience in conducting independent research and in the creation and maintenance of various databases. The following are required qualifications for the position:

A bachelor’s degree in planning, public health, economics, computer sciences, or a related field or at least 3 years of experience in a related field.
Excellent written and oral communications skills, especially for emails, websites, briefing papers, and technical documentation.
Demonstrated strategic and analytical capabilities, capacity for innovation, self-motivation, and goal-orientation.
Experience with management of databases.
A high proficiency with Microsoft Access, ESRI ArcMap, and HTML.
Experience working with diverse data sets from federal, state, and local agencies.
Knowledge of emerging Web 2.0 technologies, including social networking and geospatial websites.

The following are additional desired qualifications for the position:

Master’s degree in planning, public health, economics, computer sciences, or related field.
Experience with open source programming and open standards.
Experience with scenarios modeling, visualization, and 3-D modeling.
Experience with the creation of population and employment projections.

ABOUT MAPC’s DATA SERVICES GROUP

The MAPC Data Services Group is responsible for data management, data analysis, and policy research. The Data Center has a four-part mission:

Provide data analysis, mapping, and policy analysis support to all other departments within the agency.
Provide basic analytical services and data products “on demand” to municipal clientele and allied organizations and agencies.
Undertake customized research projects or studies for external clients.
Conduct independent research on emerging planning issues of regional significance to help educate public and private stakeholders about regional trends and policy alternatives.

Over the past few years the Data Center has:

Developed the Metro Boston Data Common, an on-line mapping tool and data viewer (in partnership with The Boston Foundation.)
Prepared demographic, employment, and land use projections for 164 municipalities in Metro Boston to support regional transportation planning.
Developed a comprehensive model of regional growth and development to support regional planning and policy development.
Pioneered the use of decision support tools such as Community Viz modeling, scenario visualization, and wireless keypads.

ABOUT MAPC

· The Metropolitan Area Planning Council is a regional planning agency serving the people who live and work in Metropolitan Boston. Our mission is to promote smart growth and regional cooperation, which includes protecting the environment, supporting economic development, encouraging sustainable land use, improving transportation, bolstering affordable housing, ensuring public safety, advancing equity and opportunity among people of all backgrounds, and fostering collaboration among municipalities.

· Our work is guided by our regional vision, "MetroFuture: Making a Greater Boston Region."(See www.MetroFuture.com.) Our Council members and staff work to advance this plan through technical assistance to cities and towns, data analysis and mapping, research, collective purchasing, public engagement, and advocacy for public policies that advance our mission.

· We welcome to our staff team intelligent, thoughtful and entrepreneurial professionals who are committed to improving the quality of life in Metro Boston.

Salary range: mid- to high-$40’s. Excellent state employee benefits package.
Position open until filled. Review of applications will begin on July 6.
Interested candidates should submit a cover letter, resume and three references to THauenstein@mapc.org.
Email responses strongly preferred. Only applications with cover letters will be reviewed
MAPC is an EOE/ AA employer.

Free Access to Child Indicators Journal

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:06:00 EDT

Free Access to Complete Child Indicators Research Journal

Dear Researcher, Editors-in-Chief Asher Ben-Arieh amp; Bong Joo Lee have selected the following articles recently published in Child Indicators Research to keep you up to date with important developments on how child indicators can be used to improve the development and well-being of children.

You can read, download and save these articles as if you were a subscriber. The complete Journal is available online for free until July 31, 2009.

Editors' Choice Articles

Read the complete Journal: Click here

Enjoy reading.

Regards, Jasper de Vaal
Product Manager Human Sciences

Greater Louisville Project

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 08:06:00 EDT

The Greater Louisville Project has released their 2009 Competitive City Report (PDF), and I commend it to you for several reasons.

First, I want you to look at the amount of information the report conveys in 7 pages. They have historical, current, and projected data over a number of indicators that show Louisville's place among its peer cities. (I was particulary interested because Jacksonville is one of those peer cities selected -- the more research others do about Jacksonville, the easier my job becomes!)

Second, the report is focused on a single goal -- "to move Louisville into the top tier among its peer cities by the end of this decade." To do that, they identified three "deep drivers" -- Education (specifically raising educational attainment to develop a more highly skilled workforce), Jobs (21st century industry and jobs), and Quality of Place (which deals with the urban vitality required to attract talent and the 21st century industry.) Each of the indicators then become linked to one of the drivers and linked directly to the goal.

Third, the mix of graphics and use of color makes the report engaging. You get the picture quickly.

Fourth, the website is engaging. You get the overview, and then can click through any of the three deep drivers, and then go to any chart, and then get an Excel data chart for each indicator -- I like the way they meet the information needs of multiple audiences.

The last thing I'll mention is that I liked how Jacksonville was improving -- our rates of progress, specifically in educational attainment and household income, have been a concentrated local concern, and I'm glad to see other people taking notice of our growth in these areas. Plus check out Jacksonville's parkland indicator! Hooray for preserving land as a recreational asset, environmental protection, and growth management tool!

Anyway, check out the report, and keep the new report release information coming.

Job Opening: Project Director

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 04:06:00 EDT

I'm relaying this from the NNIP listserve. For full details and to apply, visit Transtria's web site at http://www.transtria.com/employment.php

Transtria is a certified, woman-owned, small public health research and consulting company with a vision of uniting people, places and policies to revolutionize public health. Transtria specializes in providing leadership and technical assistance to support the development, implementation and evaluation of research and practice-based projects. Transtria works with clients and community partners to understand their needs, create a collaborative process for engagement, identify strategies for change, monitor progress, document outcomes and share findings with others.

We are seeking a well-rounded leader to help guide the direction of our new Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities project and to play a key role in the ongoing growth and development of our organization. This following capacities will serve as the basis for review of the candidates:

· Lifestyles, behaviors and health: knowledgeable about nutrition, physical activity and obesity and associated ecological factors contributing to these outcomes

· Health inequities: commitment to prioritizing communities marginalized by social, economic or environmental determinants of health

· System, policy and environment change: understanding of multidisciplinary approaches to create community and organizational changes to impact health behaviors and health outcomes; insight into the processes, assets and challenges associated with planning and implementing these approaches

· Research and evaluation: facility with methods and measures to assess and evaluate systems, policies, environments, practices, promotional and programmatic activities, behaviors and health; qualitative and quantitative data collection, management and analysis

· Collaboration and partnership: experience with community engagement and relationship building; competence in directing or facilitating communications with a diverse array of community partners (e.g., policy-makers and elected officials, community leaders, community-based organizations, coalitions, advocacy groups, or representatives from local government agencies – health, planning, transportation, parks and recreation, community and economic development)

Please see the attached position description for a list of essential functions and minimum requirement of the position. Applications are available on our website: www.transtria.com

"Greenest Cities" Indicator Sets

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 01:06:00 EDT

Here's a nice round-up of measures of sustainable or "green" cities from a number of sources. It's from Elizabeth Barrette on Gaiatribe, which is a blog "support[ing] the premise that humanity is the part of the biosphere that can think, which gives us the responsibility to care for life and the Earth. Here you'll find discussions of renewable energy, sustainable development, intentional community, nature religions, environmental awareness, and related topics."

The list provided is a quick overview of a number of resources and indicator sets to look at urban sustainability. Take a look, and let me know -- which other resources should have been added to that list?

Indicators Report: Whatcom Counts

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 04:06:00 EDT

Elizabeth Jennings, Executive Director of the Whatcom Coalition for Healthy Communities in Whatcom County, Washington (Bellingham area) sent me a note to look at their indicators website, Whatcom Counts.

The focus of the website is on community health indicators. They do some nice things with the site that I think community indicators practitioners should pay attention to.

First, they use dashboard images well to identify where the indicators are against a scale of where they ought to be. The visualizations appear as mini-dashboards, gauges marked off in red, yellow, and green, so that the message is easily recognizable, even without any numbers attached. Clicking through the image gives you the current value, the values for red/green/yellow, and a mouseover gives you a legend that explains if the comparisons are made over time, by average, or by region.

Secondly, clicking through the indicator gives you more detailed information, including what the indicator measures, why it is important, technical notes, source information, the URL of the source, the URL of the data, and a graph of time-series data. I appreciate this attention to the metadata needs of the end user, and applaud how they've taken a simplified image and combined it with more detailed data to meet needs of multiple user types.

Third, I like the grouping of the indicators by topic centers (with a broad vision of what constitutes community health), as well as providing the option to search for individual indicators. The interface for finding indicators appears intuitive and easy to use.

Fourth, i like the bringing together of multiple information formats -- indicators/statistics, reports/data, and current news. The inclusion of a "feature story" on the main page provides ways to engage with the information for those who are not comfortable extracting meaning by themselves from the data, and provides a context for understanding how the indicators interact with key community issues.

Last, I like the way the user is given options to Click -- Learn -- Act. The Act section is interesting; they've provided the following links:

ACT - Get involved. Apply information and ideas to an issue that is important to you.
Promising Practices - Find solutions
Local Resources - Get involved locally
Contribute Content - Submit content

I think this is an exciting presentation of information. Elizabeth writes:

"Since launching in 2006, we’ve been piloting how to use the site as a tool in our community convening work, not just a static source of information. Our traffic has grown from about 1,500 visits per month at the beginning of 2008 to over 9,000 in January 2009. "

I think you'll agree that they're doing some remarkable work. Take a look and let me know what you think.

And keep sharing with me your indicators projects! We all benefit when we can learn from each other.

If It Matters, Measure It!

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 01:06:00 EDT

I wanted to pass along this blog post from Scott Burns highlighting the importance of government performance measurement and pointing to the CDC's metrics page as a best practice example.

Along the same line, I stumbled across this blog called Measures Matter that is focused on government performance measurement.

Of course, i still rely on the resources at the Public Performance Management Reporting Network and the Association of Government Accountants (AGA) Blog.

What other resources do you find helpful for discussing government performance measures?

CIC Extends Time for Proposals

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:06:00 EDT

Community Indicators Consortium
2009 Conference Call for Proposals
Deadline Extended to June 30th

The deadline for submitting proposals for CIC's 2009 Conference, to be held October 1-2, 2009 at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue Washington, USA, has been extended to June 30th.

The theme of this year's conference is:
"Community Indicators as Tools for Social Change:
Tracking Progress and Increasing Accountability."

We are looking for proposals for presentations, panels and speakers for the conference dates of October 1-2. We are also looking for proposals for optional training workshops available, for an additional fee, on September 30th.

Interested presenters can see the pdf of the complete call for proposals and submit proposals on the CIC web site. See our Seventh Annual International Conference page for more information and to register. For sponsorship and exhibition opportunities, see our Sponsorship page.

Also, please note that June 15th is the end of the special discount registration rates -- $250 for members and $300 for nonmembers -- for the conference. After that registration for the conference will be $300 for members and $350 for nonmembers. See our on-line registration page for more details.

We are very excited about how the conference is shaping up and look forward to seeing you in the fall.

Sincerely,

Maureen Hart
Community Indicators Consortium