Community Indicators for Your Community
The Jacksonville Community Council (JCCI) understands indicators and community change, with 24 years of producing the annual Quality of Life Progress Report for Jacksonville and the Northeast Florida region, and two decades of helping other communities develop their own sustainable indicators projects. JCCI consultants give you the information you need to measure progress, identify priorities for action, and assess results.
I'd like to talk with you personally about how we can help. E-mail me at ben@jcci.org, call (904) 396-3052, or visit CommunityWorks for more information. From Sarasota to Siberia, we're ready and willing to assist.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
PolicyMap Releases New Widget
Friday, November 6, 2009
Londrina, Brazil and Using Community Indicators for Transformation
They're doing some impressive work. Their Manual de Indicadores de Desenvolvimento Londrina 2008 (PDF) begins with a vision:
“Londrina 2034: uma comunidade ativa e articulada, construindo uma cidade humana, segura e saudável, tecnologicamente avançada, integrada com a região Norte do Paraná e globalmente conectada, com uma economia diversificada e dinâmica promovendo o equilíbrio social, cultural e ambiental.”
(Londrina 2034: an active, connected community, building a humane, safe, healthy, and technologically advanced city, integrated with the entire North Paraná region and connected globally, with a diverse and dynamic economy promoting a social, cultural and environmental balance.)
They use their indicators report to:
– Fomentar as ações comunitárias;
– Estimular a comunidade para melhoria da qualidade de vida;
– Facilitar o direcionamento de atitudes para implantação de projetos;
– Detalhar melhor a situação por área especifica;
– Intensificar a comunicação da comunidade.
- Encourage community action;
- Stimulate the community to improve the quality of life;
- Facilitate change in attitudes towards project implementation;
- Provide details of the current situation in specific areas of the community; and
- Enhance community communication.
They've been working hard to align the business, government, and university sectors of their community to create cooperative partnerships and a shared community agenda. They're doing some pretty amazing work, and demonstrating the universality of a community change model structured around community indicators.
If you speak Portuguese, take a look at the work they're doing. Ary Sudan told me that the model is spreading to other cities across Brazil as the country moves through a remarkable transformation into a global power. If you don't speak Portuguese, now would be a good time to learn. Read more ...
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Labels: Brazil, community indicators, report releases
Richmond, Indiana Using Community Indicators for Community Discussion
Check out this report from the Palladium-Item (which is one of the odder names for a local newspaper I've ever seen) about the RICHMOND INDICATORS: A Community and Economic Benchmark Report (PDF). They're hosting a televised program with interactive internet chat to discuss the implications of the indicators report for competition, struggle, and opportunity in economic development.
The report covers demographics and economic indicators, plus a social capital index, commute sheds, and an innovation index. It's an interesting report out of eastern Indiana and worth a look at what they're doing and how they're trying to engage the public around the report.
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Ben Warner
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Labels: citizen engagement, community indicators, report releases
Monday, November 2, 2009
Request for Comments: Healthy People Objectives
Thought you might appreciate this opportunity to give feedback --
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Follow OECD World Form LIVE
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Monday, October 19, 2009
New U.S. Gross National Happiness Index Implemented!
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)
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Labels: Measuring Happiness, national indicators, social networks
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Free PPMRN/GASB Webinar
Share your comments on the Proposed GASB SEA Guidelines
Tues., Oct. 20 12:30-2:30pm (ET)The Public Performance Measurement and Reporting Network (PPMRN) will host a FREE online webinar / audio-conference featuring members of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) team who will answer questions about the Proposed Voluntary Service Efforts and Accomplishments Reporting Guidelines.
PPMRN hopes to encourage wide participation and to provide constructive feedback to GASB on the content of this proposal. Please pass this information along - participants do not have to be PPMRN members.We ask that participants read and be familiar with the entire document prior to the webinar.For more information about this webinar, including a link to the document and instructions on how to register for this free event, please visit the PPMRN website at: http://www.ppmrn.net/resources/articles/5749.
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Labels: government performance measures, webinars
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Call for Papers: Housing Data
From: American Housing Survey (AHS) ListServ <ahs@huduser.org>:
Cityscape is a scholarly journal published three times per year by the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development'
"Data Shop, a department of Cityscape, presents short articles or notes on the uses of data in housing and urban research. Through this department, PD&R introduces readers to new and overlooked data sources and to improved techniques in using well-known data. The emphasis is on sources and methods that analysts can use in their own work. Researchers often run into knotty data problems involving data interpretation or manipulation that must be solved before a project can proceed, but they seldom get to focus in detail on the solutions to such problems."
If you are interested in contributing such a note, please send me an abstract by November 13 in order to be considered for the July 2010 issue. The timeline would be I would notify you of selection by December 1, and I would want a draft by February 1, with a final version by February 19. If you are interested in making a contribution but cannot meet these deadlines, please send me an abstract for possible publication in later issues.
Dav Vandenbroucke
Senior Economist
U.S. Dept. HUD
david.a.vandenbroucke@hud.gov
202-402-5890
(Hat tip: Glenn Brown)
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Labels: affordable housing, call for papers, data
Portraits of Peel
I first met Srimanta Mahonty some years ago at a CIC Conference and was impressed by the work he'd been doing. He was analyzing a set of quality-of-life factors by population group within Peel, Ontario, Canada, and was demonstrating the inequities and resilience of a range of immigrant populations. His thinking helped me in the growth and development of our own Race Relations Progress Report.
His work has continued. He just sent out this note on his new, updated website:
The Portraits of Peel website provides three types of information:
- Portraits of Peel Online Database (Population data from 1996, 2001 and 2006 Census at the Peel Neighbourhood level)
Available On-line at: http://www.portraitsofpeel.ca/pop.php - Target Group Profiles (for example: Seniors, Recent Immigrants, South Asian, Chinese, Blacks and other communities)
Available On-line at: http://www.portraitsofpeel.ca/tgp.php - Peel Statistics from different sources (for example: Region of Peel, Peel Police, Statistics Canada, HRDC, Health Canada, etc.)
Available On-line at: http://www.portraitsofpeel.ca/peelstatistics.php
Please forward this information to your networks as appropriate.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Srimanta Mohanty, Ph.D.
Director of Research & Administration
The Social Planning Council of Peel
Take a moment and check it out!
Read more ...
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Ben Warner
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7:49 AM
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Labels: Canada, community indicators, demography
Monday, October 12, 2009
State Health Data Scorecard
Here's an interesting site to play with -- it maps out a series of close to 40 health indicators by state in four areas: Access, Prevention & Treatment, Avoidable Hospital Use & Costs, and Healthy Lives. It then adds one more category, Equity, and measures indicators of equity across income, insurance coverage, and race & ethnicity.
So take a look at the Commonwealth Find's State Scorecard 2009 for some interesting indicators, trends, and state rankings. The indicator set is an intriguing one to consider as we think about health indicators on a local level, and the set should make us think a little bit about the federal and state context within which we measure local health indicators.
(Hat tip: kuri)
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Labels: data display tools, health indicators, mapping
Call for Chapters: Best Practices in Community QOL Indicators
Special Volume on
Community Quality-of-Life Indicators: Best Practices V
Published by Springer in the new
Best Practices in Quality-of-Life Research Book Series
Volume Focus: This volume will publish best practices of community quality-of-life indicators projects. The first volume was published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2004 (edited by M. Joseph Sirgy, Don Rahtz, and Dong-Jin Lee). The second volume was published by Springer in 2006 (edited by M. Joseph Sirgy, Don Rahtz, and David Swain). The third and fourth volumes were published by Springer (visit www.springer.com and type “Community Quality-of-Life Indicators” in the Search window) and the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (both edited by M. Joseph Sirgy, Rhonda Phillips, and Don Rahtz).
For the fifth volume, we are seeking excellent case studies that can be used by community planners, policy makers and others as good examples or “prototypes” of community quality-of-life indicator projects. Papers dealing with theoretical issues in planning, developing, and using community quality-of-life indicators are not suitable for this volume. Instead, they should be sent for review and possible publication in Social Indicators Research (SIR) or Applied Research in Quality-of-Life (ARQOL). The fifth volume will be published in the new book series, Best Practices in Quality-of-Life Research. The book series editor is Dr. Dave Webb of the University of Western Australia.
Volume Editors: M. Joseph Sirgy (Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, USA), Rhonda Phillips (Arizona State University, USA), and Don Rahtz (College of William and Mary, USA)
Submission Deadline: December 31st, 2009
Submit to: M. Joseph Sirgy, Department of Marketing, Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0236, USA. Tel: 540.231.5110. Fax: 540.231.3076. E-mail: sirgy@vt.edu
Submission Guidelines:
- The paper should be typed in either Arial or Times Roman, font size 10-12 with a margin of 1 inch on all sides.
- The paper should be typed either 1½ or double-spaced.
- Paper length should not exceed 30 pages in total including references, tables, and figures.
- Reference style: American Psychological Association (APA) style is preferred.
- E-mail attachment is the preferred mode of submission. Submit paper electronically to sirgy@vt.edu.
- All submissions should be original and not previously published. The submitted paper should not be submitted simultaneously to other publication outlets.
Guidelines for Paper Selection and Final Manuscript Preparation:
- Each paper will be subjected to a review by 2-3 referees who are experts in the field.
- The editors in consultation with the referees will make the final decision concerning acceptance or rejection.
- Notification of acceptance or rejection will be sent out by the end of January 2010.
- It is very likely that the editors will request changes to the accepted papers based on the reviewers’ suggestions. We will forward a production schedule once all papers are reviewed.
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Labels: best practices, call for papers, community indicators, quality of life




