Citizen Engagement in Community Indicators Conference

I briefly mentioned the Strasbourg conference that I had to miss because I was getting married that weekend. I remembered to get married, but I forgot to share with you the results of conference.

You can see here the format and many of the presentations of the Seminar on ‘Involving citizens and communities in measuring and fostering well-being and progress’ hosted by the Council of Europe, in partnership with the Autonomous Province of Trento (Italy) and the OECD.

The description of the conference follows:

The aim of the seminar was to develop new approaches and tools for measuring how societies are changing by using high quality, reliable statistics to assess progress in a range of areas affecting citizens’ quality of life. Citizen participation in this process and the strengthening of their capacity to understand the social and economic context in which they live is important for improving policy making, democracy and citizen well-being.

The event provided the opportunity for an exchange of good practices from various Council of Europe member states as well as non-member states such as Australia, Canada, Colombia and Japan and sought to promote international co-operation at governmental and non-governmental level.

Participants had the opportunity to attend two round tables and six separate workshops addressing the following issues:

• Well-being and well-being for all: what differences and which indicators?

• Determining the objective and the political aim of involving citizens in developing indicators; identifying responsibilities and clarifying the institutional aspects of the approach

• Links between traditional systems of indicators and those developed with citizens/communities: antagonisms, alternatives or complementarities?

• Working with citizens /communities to develop indicators of well-being/progress

• Assessing needs in conjunction with citizens, collecting data establishing a link with conventional statistical data

• How can the question of goods for well being be taken into account in the work to develop indicators with citizens/communities?

See more here.