Citizen DAN Proposal Intrigues Me

There's an interesting proposal up for the Knight News Challenge awards this year. The proposal is for something called "Citizen DAN", with DAN standing for Public Data Appliance and Network.

You can read the proposal here, which includes external links for more information.

Here's a short description of the project:

Citizen DAN is an open source framework to leverage relevant local data for citizen journalists. It is a:



■Appliance for filtering and analyzing data specific to local community indicators


■Means to visualize local data over time or by neighborhood


■Meeting place for the public to upload and share local data and information


■Web data portal that can be individually tailored by any local community


■Node in a global network of communities across which to compare indicators of community well-being.


Good decisions and good journalism require good information. Starting with pre-loaded government data, Citizen DAN provides any citizen the framework to learn and compare local statistics and data with other similar communities. This helps to promote the grist for citizen journalism; it is also a vehicle for discovery and learning across the community.


Citizen DAN comes pre-packaged with all necessary deployment components and documentation, including local data from government sources. It includes facilities for direct upload of additional local data in formats from spreadsheets to standard databases. Many standard converters are included with the basic package.


Citizen DAN may be implemented by local governments or by community advocacy groups. When deployed, using its clear documentation, sponsors may choose whether or what portions of local data are exposed to the broader Citizen DAN network. Data exposed on the network is automatically available to any other network community for comparison and analysis purposes.


This data appliance and network (DAN) is multi-lingual. It will be tested in three cities in Canada and the US, showing its multi-lingual capabilities in English, Spanish and French.

What has me most excited is not just the project itself, but the growth in open-source solutions to data presentation/management for community indicators programs. These should lower the barriers to entry for many communities to establish/maintain a useful indicators set, and help spur increased innovation in both what we measure and how we use what we measure.

As more of these solutions move from the drawing board through testing and implementation, we'll share them here. In the meantime, I applaud the many folks out there doing good work to make my job both easier and more effective.

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Community Indicator Projects and Role Challenges

I had the privilege yesterday of meeting with the people behind the Arizona Indicators Project that we've talked about before. One of the topics that came up in conversation was the difficulty in managing the role relationships among being a trusted data provider, a neutral convener, and an effective advocate for change.

I've been thinking about the topic since I arrived back in Jacksonville (in the remaining moments before I head up to Beaufort, South Carolina to talk to them about their indicators work!) Let me lay out the issues and how we've navigated them, mostly successfully, in Jacksonville. Then I'd love to hear your comments about different models to manage these potential role conflicts.

First of all, the role of the trusted data provider is paramount (in my opinion) to having a successful community indicators project. People need to have confidence in the information you're providing. If they don't trust the data, or think you're manipulating it in some way to push a particular agenda, you're sunk -- your integrity has to be central to how you're perceived if your data are going to be used.

The second role, that of a neutral convener, stems from our experience in Jacksonville. We existed to bring the community together around key local issues before we began publishing community indicators reports, and so my perception of the functions of an organization are colored by that history and experience. That being said, we don't publish indicators reports just because we like looking at numbers. We do so with an intent to influence decision-making in a positive fashion, to pull people and institutions into doing better things and doing things better because they have good data to inform them. Being the trusted data source creates a good fit with being the trusted convener around the issues identified by the data. This convening function or role is critical to addressing problems that persist despite the best efforts of the current systems.

The indicators report also connects issues across traditional boundaries. A good report highlights the interrelationships among different issue areas or sectors -- how education affects economic development, and how that affects environmental sustainability, and how that affects health, etc. Because we're talking about community indicators with a broad sweep across multiple areas, the indicators organization is often well suited to bring multiple partners and perspectives together to identify solutions to the problems. And because the data are trusted, the organization is in a good position to be trusted to facilitate an even-handed, honest discussion. 

The third role, that of being an effective advocate for change, creates difficulties. We do indicators because we want change -- and we know whether or not the change is happening, because that's what we're measuring. Here's where the role conflicts and different organizational models show up. Organizations can passively wait for someone else to do good things to make things happen and improve the indicators -- to the extreme, this is a publish-and-wait approach. These projects tend to spend a lot of time battling for relevancy. On the other extreme, organizations can actively push a change agenda. These organizations have to fight the perception that they are no longer neutral, and fight to maintain perceived integrity behind their data.

Clearly, the model for community improvement centered around the indicators project has to be involved enough to galvanize action for change, yet removed enough to remain a neutral convener and a trusted, independent data source. This turns out to be challenging, but by no means impossible -- what is needed is a level of intentionality and foresight in the approach to community change. The model for community change that your organization develops has to, again in my opinion, wrestle through these issues and identify how the organization is going to address each of these important functions.

In Jacksonville, we've been successful in maintaining both relevance and trust through leveraging the neutral convener role to engage citizens as advocates for change. We give them the information to be better involved in community improvement, and allow them to take the descriptive indicator information and articulate their own prescriptions for improvement. We've seen widespread community debates on the proper course of action around an issue centered on the indicators, where each side in a political debate use our same report to justify their preferred course of action.

And that, I think, is as it should be -- we want to create a community culture of data-informed decision-making processes, and when the debates are data-rich and thoughtful, we're seeing democracy at its best.

What are your thoughts?

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It's Census Time!

The 2010 Census is upon us, and many of us are involved in encouraging people to fill out their Census forms and send them back. At a recent Complete Count Committee meeting here in Jacksonville, a Census worker suggested that participation in the census was a more important civic engagement exercise than voting.

We had a great conversation last year at the National Association of Planning Councils' conference on Census issues, and I'd suggest you look at those speaker presentations for some interesting information. I know that we in the indicators world tend to use census information a lot, and the changes with the ACS sample size and lack of a long form survey pose challenges to data use.

At the same time, a new study has come out challenging the accuracy of the IPUMS data, especially as it relates to people over age 65. When you think about the sheer number of policy decisions that are based on Census information, you quickly see the critical need to get it right in not just the count but in the ways the numbers are statistically modified to protect privacy.

So let me ask: How are you using Census data? ACS data? How are you involved in encouraging people to fill out their Census information? And if you had a wish list, what would you do to improve the census information-gathering and reporting processes?

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JCCI Releases 25th Annual Quality of Life Progress Report

The Jacksonville Community Council Inc. (JCCI) releases its Silver Anniversary edition of the Quality of Life Progress Report. The 2009 report reflects a complete redesign of the 25-year-old report on trends in the quality of life in Jacksonville and Northeast Florida, along with new interactive web-based mapping technology to provide state-wide comparisons of much of the data.

The report assesses the quality of life in Jacksonville through more than one hundred individual indicators that detail trends in nine sections of the community: Achieving Educational Excellence; Growing a Vibrant Economy; Preserving the Natural Environment; Promoting Social Wellbeing & Harmony; Enjoying Arts, Culture & Recreation; Sustaining a Healthy Community; Maintaining a Responsive Government; Moving Around Efficiently; and Keeping the Community Safe.

“For 25 years the JCCI Quality of Life Progress Report has provided vital data about where we are, where we’ve been and where we need to be,” says Jacksonville Mayor John Peyton in the report: “This Silver Anniversary edition continues to guide us as a community.”

The 18-page Summary Report being released Tuesday provides a succinct assessment of our quality of life using two Key Indicators and up to 5 supporting indicators per section. A companion online Reference Document provides greater detail as well as additional indicators.

The third piece being unveiled at the release is JCCI’s Community Snapshot, a new online data display and mapping technology. “I can’t overstate the technological leap we have made with this upgrade,” said JCCI President Chris Arab. “It literally makes data come alive.” With Community Snapshot, JCCI will update indicators as soon as new data is provided. Community policy and resource decision makers will be able to assess progress and make their decisions with the latest information possible.

Newly installed Regional Chamber of Commerce Chair Kelly Madden led the 21-person review committee that rebuilt this year’s report and prioritized the indicators for each section. “We took our work seriously“, said Madden, understanding they were creating a new framework for conveying the story of Jacksonville’s quality of life. Ms. Madden will present the report to Mayor Peyton and the citizens of Jacksonville. Mayor Peyton will also speak at the event.

JCCI’s Quality of Life Report is the longest continuously running community indicators report in the nation. Created in 1985 by community volunteers, it is an internationally recognized standard. JCCI will recognize those 1985 pioneers during this Silver Anniversary event.

The data for the Quality of Life Progress Report is obtained from the records and documents of public and private organizations. An annual opinion survey provides the remaining data.

Read more in this story from The Florida Times-Union.

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Seattle Information Technology Indicators Project

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

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JCCI Releases 5th Annual Race Relations Progress Report

The Jacksonville Community Council Inc (JCCI) released its 2009 Race Relations Progress Report during the Martin Luther King Jr. Annual Breakfast on January 8th at the Prime Osborn Convention Center. This is the fifth edition of the annual report that examines progress in addressing racial disparities and improving race relations in Jacksonville.

The 2009 report examines perceptions about race gained by annual survey and hard data that portray the realities of race and racial disparities across the Jacksonville community. Created as the result of JCCI’s 2002 citizen-led study, Beyond the Talk: Improving Race Relations (PDF), the progress report provides historical data spanning as much as 25 years across six areas: Education; Employment and Income; Housing and Neighborhoods; Health; Justice and the Legal System; and Civic Engagement and the Political System.

Jennifer Chapman of Fidelity Investments and Broderick Green of the Chamber’s Cornerstone Regional Development Partnership led the team that reviewed this year’s report and presented their findings at Friday’s Martin Luther King Jr. Annual Breakfast. “Eliminating racial disparities in our community is not only a moral imperative – it’s an economic one,” Chapman and Green stated. Among highlights in the 2009 report is the widening black-white gap in the perception of whether racism is a problem in Jacksonville. This hinders the community’s ability to come together to take action and solve the real problems that exist, according to the JCCI report.

The report reflects mixed signals in the area of education, where graduation rates improved but racial disparities widened. Of great concern were growing racial disparities in the areas of employment and income, fueled by the recession, where black minority populations were hit especially hard. Positive indicators included perceptions of neighborhood safety, heart disease death rates, declining homicide rates, voter turnout, and black felony inmate admissions, although significant racial disparities in several of these areas.

Copies of the report were distributed at the MLK Breakfast and are available in hard copy from the JCCI offices or online at www.jcci.org. For more information contact JCCI at 904-396-3052.

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Data Quality Campaign Update

Here's a press release updating the latest survey results from the Data Quality Campaign. I thought you might be interested and want to get involved on your state level pushing for better data quality.

Each year, the Data Quality Campaign (DQC) surveys all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to assess states’ progress toward implementing the 10 Essential Elements of a high-quality longitudinal data system. In 2005, no states reported having all 10 Elements. This year, 11 states have all 10 Elements (up from six states in 2008). Other signs of progress include:


* 31 states have eight or more Elements.


* Only two states have fewer than five Elements in place.


* All but one state collect student-level enrollment, demographic and program participation data (Element 2) and student-level graduation and dropout data (Element 8).


* All but two states have a unique student identifier that connects student data across key databases and across years (Element 1) and have the ability to match students’ test records from year to year to measure academic growth (Element 3).


ARRA has motivated states to remove barriers to data sharing, and it provides a strategic opportunity to engage a broad range of state stakeholders in a thoughtful dialogue around how data systems should be built, expanded and used to inform decisions to improve both individual and system outcomes.


In January 2010, the DQC will release its first report on the 10 State Actions to ensure the effective use of longitudinal data, which will provide greater detail on how states are changing policies and practices to promote linkages across systems, ensure appropriate access to new data and analysis, and strengthen stakeholder capacity to use the information.


Overview Documents

* 2009 DQC Annual Progress Report


The Annual Progress Report on State Data Systems is a DQC publication that reports on states’ progress in building the 10 Essential Elements in their statewide longitudinal data systems. States are making progress; however, many states lack critical Elements essential for addressing college and career readiness and the impact that teachers have on student achievement (Elements 5, 6 and 7).


* 2009 DQC Annual Survey – Combined State Profiles


All state profiles include the state’s status on the 10 Essential Elements, which key policy questions the state can answer, a national comparison across states, and a preview for the 10 State Actions. This document combines all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico state profiles.


* 2009 DQC Annual Survey State of the States


This presentation was given by Aimee Guidera, Executive Director of the Data Quality Campaign, on November 21, 2009 at the Council of Chief State School Officers’ (CCSS) Annual Policy Forum. The presentation highlights the state of the nation regarding the 10 Essential Elements, describes key ARRA opportunities, acknowledges states progress and encourages work toward the 10 State Actions.


* 2009 DQC Annual Survey Press Release


Every state is on track to have a longitudinal data system that follows student progress from preschool through college by 2011. However, many states still lack key elements that could inform critical policy discussions like college and career readiness and teacher impact, states the report, which was released during the Council of Chief State School Officers’ (CCSSO) Annual Policy Forum on November 21, 2009.

Find individual state profiles  and each of the documents listed above here.

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PolicyMap Releases New Widget

Introducing the PolicyMap 'Widget'!

PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- PolicyMap.com, a national online data warehouse and mapping application, now offers subscribers an exciting new tool: the ability to embed fully interactive maps on their own websites. PolicyMap provides a wealth of neighborhood data through fluid online maps, tables and reports.

This new offering -- The PolicyMap Widget -- is a customizable instance of PolicyMap that displays interactive maps on your website in just a few, simple steps. Like PolicyMap, the widgets can display data at a variety of geographies -- from an address to a block group, zip code or congressional district. PolicyMap widgets are fully interactive -- giving both the visualization of a thematic or heat map and the underlying information for any place you click. 

"When Mercy Portfolio Services (MPS) partnered with the City of Chicago to design, implement and report on the City's $55M Neighborhood Stabilization Program, we created a system called Community Central. Integrating Community Central with the PolicyMap widget takes us to a new level of data capacity and presentation," said Bill Goldsmith, President of MPS. "It allows stakeholders to analyze our work more strategically. With our data and PolicyMap's, we track projects and identify trends affecting our communities. PolicyMap's data warehouse and technology is unmatched in today's marketplace."

PolicyMap uses cutting-edge technology to display sophisticated, fast, interactive maps in ordinary Web browsers. "These are not maps that give you driving directions or help you find the nearest cafe," said Maggie McCullough, PolicyMap Director. "But if you want to track unemployment or home sales in communities nationwide, this is where to go. The ability to dynamically render and customize thousands of shaded maps sets this technology apart, making it especially suited to interactive research and data analysis."

To see a widget in action, check out TRF's charter school investments.

Or embed PolicyMap’s first FREE widget: a national map of county unemployment data. As the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases new monthly unemployment data, your widget automatically updates. 

About TRF and PolicyMap

A CNET Web100 award-winning online mapping tool that makes it quick and easy to gather and analyze geocentric information, PolicyMap is a service of The Reinvestment Fund, a not-for-profit leader in the financing of neighborhood revitalization. PolicyMap empowers decision makers with credible market and demographic data in an easy-to-use geographic information system. For information, visit www.policymap.com or call 1-866-923-MAPS.

CONTACT: Margaret Bradley, +1-267-304-5397 margaret.bradley@trfund.com

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Londrina, Brazil and Using Community Indicators for Transformation

Tuesday this week I met with representatives of the Fórum Desenvolve Londrina (roughly the Londrina, Brazil Development Forum). Londrina is a city of about a half-million people in the state of Paraná, Brazil.We had gone down to Paraná a few years ago to help them launch a community indicators project, and they had last come up to Jacksonville to see us in 2006.

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.

Their indicators reports are accompanied by annual studies. Last year's study was on providing opportunities for all in business development, and a task force is currently working on implementing the principal ten recommendations from that study. The new study is on human mobility -- looking at transportation systems from a broad perspective, including roadways and public transit but also including sidewalks and pedestrian traffic in an overall examination of how people get around in their community.

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.

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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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Request for Comments: Healthy People Objectives

Thought you might appreciate this opportunity to give feedback --

Message from Dr. William Thompson regarding the US Department of Health and Human Services' Healthy People objectives:

Dear All,

Every 10 years, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) develops what are called Healthy People objectives. These national objectives are designed to measure important health outcomes that can be monitored over time and can be improved upon based on disease prevention and health promotion. The objectives serve as a planning guide for the nation, states, communities and other stakeholders to improve the public's health. The draft objectives by topic area for Healthy People 2020 have been published online (http://www.healthypeople.gov/hp2020/Objectives/TopicAreas.aspx). Under the heading Quality of Life and Well-Being, there is text describing the current status of this topic area. A set of objectives encompassing the areas of Health-Related Quality of Life and Well-Being have been submitted and are under consideration by the Healthy People program. The proposed objectives are listed below.

We would like to encourage interested stakeholders to provide public comments regarding the scientific data that support the reliability and validity of measuring Health-Related Quality of Life and Well-Being outcomes at the population level as well as propose potential additional objectives.

Feedback from the public, particularly those with expertise in the area, is a very important part of this process and can help with decisions regarding topics to include. The public comments can be made at http://www.healthypeople.gov/hp2020/Comments/default.asp.

Please note that all comments will be needed by December 31st, 2009.

Thanks,

William W. Thompson, PhD

Team Lead, Health-Related Quality of Life National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

E-mail: wct2@cdc.gov

Julie Dawson Weeks, Ph.D.

Chief (acting), Aging and Chronic Disease Studies Branch National Center for Health Statistics US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

E-mail: JWeeks@cdc.gov

Proposed Healthy People 2020 Health-Related Quality of Life and Well-Being Objectives:

Objective 1: Reduce the reported number of physically and mentally unhealthy days among adults in the US population.

1a. Reduce the reported number of physically unhealthy days.

1b. Reduce the reported number of mentally unhealthy days.

Objective 2: Increase the number of adults in the U.S. population who report high levels of health-related quality of life in the physical, mental, and social domains.

2a. Increase the proportion of adults who report high levels of physical health-related quality of life.

2b. Increase the proportion of adults who report high levels of mental health-related quality of life.

2c. Increase the proportion of adults who report high levels of social health-related quality of life.

Objective 3. Increase the percentage of persons in the US population who report physical, mental, and social well-being.

3a. Increase the percentage of adults who report satisfaction with life 3b. Increase the percentage of adults who report feeling positive affect 3c. Increase the percentage of adults who report receiving social and emotional support 3d. Increase the percentage of adults who report 20 or more days of vitality 3e. Increase the percentage of adults who report a sense of autonomy, competence and relatedeness

Objective 4. Reduce the proportion of adults in the U.S. population who report being unable to participate, or who report having difficulty participating, in common activities.

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