Enhancing the art and science of community indicators and building a network of interested people.
Community Indicators for Your Community
Real, lasting community change is built around knowing where you are, where you want to be, and whether your efforts are making a difference. Indicators are a necessary ingredient for sustainable change. And the process of selecting community indicators -- who chooses, how they choose, what they choose -- is as important as the data you select.
This is an archive of thoughts I had about indicators and the community indicators movement. Some of the thinking is outdated, and many of the links may have broken over time.
The Official Google Blog reports that they've released a new search tool -- one that accesses public information and builds on their acquisition of Trendalyzer.
Type in [unemployment rate] or [population], followed by a U.S. state or county. (Just type in the county name -- "unemployment rate duval" worked for me, while "unemployment rate duval county florida" gave me other links but not the publicdata information.)
The most recent estimates will appear. Click on the publicdata link, and you'll get an interactive table.
The table gave me monthly unemployment rates from 1990 to March 2009 for Duval County, Florida. It then had a list of states and counties and I could click on any one of them and get instant comparative data charted alongside my original county on the graph. Very cool.
Google says,
"The data we're including in this first launch represents just a small fraction of all the interesting public data available on the web. There are statistics for prices of cookies, CO2 emissions, asthma frequency, high school graduation rates, bakers' salaries, number of wildfires, and the list goes on. Reliable information about these kinds of things exists thanks to the hard work of data collectors gathering countless survey forms, and of careful statisticians estimating meaningful indicators that make hidden patterns of the world visible to the eye. All the data we've used in this first launch are produced and published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau's Population Division. They did the hard work! We just made the data a bit easier to find and use.
Since Google's acquisition of Trendalyzer two years ago, we have been working on creating a new service that make lots of data instantly available for intuitive, visual exploration. Today's launch is a first step in that direction. We hope people will find this search feature helpful, whether it's used in the classroom, the boardroom or around the kitchen table. We also hope that this will pave the way for public data to take a more central role in informed public conversations.
This journal is available in its entirety free for a limited time. There's some articles in it that should be of interest to the community indicators practitioner; take a look at the piece on data challenges in developing child well-being indicators and the article called "Beyond GPA."
Here's more details about how to get access to the material in the journal:
Dear Researcher,
We are delighted to offer you FREE access to the entire issue of Child Indicators Research until May 20, 2009. Take advantage of this time-limited offer - bookmark the site, visit it throughout this period and pass the link to your colleagues.
Table of Contents: Read, download and save these articles online as if you were a subscriber:
CFED, the Corporation for Enterprise Development, seeks to fill the newly created position of Vice President for Policy & Research. Our successful incumbent will develop, articulate and champion a robust research and policy agenda predicated on a vision of expanding the economic opportunities available to all Americans.
CFED is a leading organization in asset building and economic development, collaborating with diverse partners at the national, state and local level. Current flagship initiatives and programs include our unprecedented Assets and Opportunity Scorecard, a state-by-state analysis of the impact of public policies on individual asset-accumulation; SEED, the national, multi-year children's development account demonstration; I'M HOME, our multi-faceted initiative to build high-quality manufactured homes and create public policies and financing options that support them as an avenue asset-building; and SETI, an innovative exploration of the use of the tax code to scale-up delivery of financial services and business literacy to millions of micro- and small business enterprises. We're deeply engaged in an array of advocacy activities, including universal children's savings accounts, expansion of the Saver's Credit, IDA tax credits and Auto IRA.
The Vice President for Policy and Research will provide vision, direction and a cohesive framework for advancing CFED's evidence-based advocacy strategy, embracing the full spectrum of asset-building and economic development strategies and bringing to fruition a wide array of emerging opportunities at the local, state and federal levels. The Vice President leads a team of 10 professionals and will serve as a member of our executive team, helping to shape our long-term agenda and drive forward CFED's strategic goals. The incumbent will be based in our Washington D.C. office and will report to CFED's President.
Here's a question and an update from the American Community Survey I thought you might want to respond to:
Request for Input and Feedback on Advanced Query (AQ) System for ACS Data
The Census Bureau seeks your input and feedback on whether it would be useful to have an Advanced Query (AQ) system for the tabulation of data from the ACS and the Census 2010 short form.
As part of Census 2000 data dissemination, the Census Bureau developed an AQ system that allowed for no-cost, user-specified tabulations from the full microdata file for a limited number of users (because of its experimental nature, the AQ system had restricted access.) It included safeguards against disclosure of identifying information about individuals and housing units.
The AQ system was discontinued in November 2008 due to concerns with emerging IT security risk trends, information on newly discovered vulnerabilities in the legacy AQ system, and the obsolescence of the hardware.Since then, the Census Bureau has been discussing the possibility of developing a new AQ system for the tabulation of ACS and 2010 Census data.
If you think you would be able to make productive use of such a system, please respond to michelle.e.jiles by May 1, 2009, with examples of the kinds of analyses you would perform with those data.
If you have questions or comments about the American Community Survey, please call (800) 923-8282 or e-mail cmo.acs.
The Data Center now has county-level data 4/17/2009
Welcome to the NEW KIDS COUNT Data Center, the place to get all the information you are looking for about the kids and families living in your community. Now including the information formerly in the Community-Level Information on Kids (CLIKS) site, the KIDS COUNT Data Center has data for states, cities, counties, and school districts.
New Education and Demographic Data Available4/17/2009
SIXTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ENVIRONMENTAL, CULTURAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY University of Cuenca, Ecuador 5-7 January 2010 http://www.SustainabilityConference.com
Here's a note from the conference organizing committee:
We are particularly excited about holding this year's Sustainability Conference in Cuenca, Ecuador. Ecuador is a country of remarkable environmental and cultural resources, and has made significant progress in their sustenance.The Galapagos Islands, for instance, were designated Ecuador's first national park in 1959 and remain one of the most biologically diverse and unique locations in the world. The Cuenca city center, a UNESCO World Heritage Trust site, continues as a site of picturesque and historically important architecture.
This Conference aims to develop a holistic view of sustainability, in which environmental, cultural and economic issues are inseparably interlinked. It will work in a multidisciplinary way, across diverse fields and taking varied perspectives in order to address the fundamentals of sustainability.
The Conference will includes numerous paper, workshop and colloquium presentations by practitioners, teachers and researchers. We would particularly like to invite you to respond to the Conference Call-for-Papers. Presenters may choose to submit written papers for publication in the fully refereed International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and social Sustainability. If you are unable to attend the Conference in person, virtual registrations are also available which allow you to submit a paper for refereeing and possible publication, as well as access to the Journal.
Whether you are a virtual or in-person presenter at this Conference, we also encourage you to present on the Conference YouTube Channel. Please select the Online Sessions link on the Conference website for further details.
The deadline for the next round in the call for papers (a title and short
abstract) is 14 May 2009. Future deadlines will be announced on the Conference website after this date. Proposals are reviewed within two weeks of submission. Full details of the Conference, including an online proposal submission form, may be found at the Conference website
A new community indicators report update, Spokane Vitals, is available, thanks to Greater Spokane Incorporated. (I have to pay a lot more attention to Spokane, Washington now, because that's where my wife is from -- about as far away as you can get from Jacksonville, Florida and still stay within the continental U.S.)
There's a nice synopsis of the report available at AmericanTowns.com, or you can download the full report here.
There's a lot of good work in community indicators happening in the Pacific Northwest, which is why the Community Indicators Consortium conference that will be held in Seattle this fall looks so inviting. (The latest news about the conference can be found in their April 2009 newsletter (PDF).)
One of the things I really like about the Spokane report is their inclusion of their peer metro areas, with map included: I'd appreciate your thoughts on including this kind of frame of reference in your community indicators report. Good idea? How might you improve it?
You've seen the numbers and the lists. But have you seen the pictures? Toby Ng has assembled a set of 20 posters that try to visualize the data in simple terms. The premise is simple: Take a series of statistics, and translate the percentages to the number of people out of 100 that would live in your world village. Out of the 100 people in your village, for example, 48 would be men, 52 women.
I'm not normally a fan of this attempt to turn statistics into lists of hypothetical villagers. (For example, the list tends to obscure and oversimplify sometimes -- all the wealthy people in the "world village" are Americans? Really?) But these posters are nice, clean, and tell stories that have immediate visual impact.
(I do agree with Flowing Data that some of the images appear random -- did he really use a banana to symbolize sexual orientation?)
Take a look and let me know what you think. How might this approach help get your message across in your community indicators project?
If you haven't signed up yet for the Results Scorecard software demonstration, you're running out of time. The demonstration will be today, Tuesday, April 14, from 12:00-1:30 p.m. EST. Go to ResultsLeadership.org for more information and for the link to sign up for the webinar.
The tool is intended to provide you with the ability to see the "big picture" for community well-being by highlighting both indicators and results.
Additional information also available at ResultsScorecard.com or by calling 301-907-7541.
I've been getting some grief from folks who want to know why I haven't posted my presentation from the NAPC Conference on Data Displays -- 30 Examples in 30 Minutes. The short answer is that the presentation was a conglomeration of a whole lot of stuff that didn't fit easily into one PowerPoint presentation, and the mishmash of stuff that WAS in my Open-Office-Powerpoint-equivalent-presentation is way too big to e-mail. I tried PDF'ing the whole thing and lost most of the fun interactive portions, and then tried re-creating the whole thing as a movie, but ended up aggravated by the limitations of time and technology to do what I wanted.
Enough of my whining. After the jump are the different examples I showed the group -- the intent was to get a conversation started and people thinking about new ways to tell stories with data, and for those who have been following this blog for a while, nearly everything I shared has been discussed in much greater detail already. I hope you enjoy the overview -- feel free to remind me of all the really cool stuff I left out.
Now click on the link to get the whole presentation. (For any of the images, clicking on them should make them larger and hopefully more readable.) To get the group moving and a little less scared of talking about data visualization techniques, we began with Sid the Science Kid:
(Go ahead and play the video. This is fun. Dance along if you need to.) Introduction
When we work with data in communities, we use that data to tell stories and inspire action. Data should make our story-telling more relevant, impactful, truthful, and powerful.
Instead, we take good stories like this one:
And then we use data to turn them into messages like this one, which drains any of the excitement and meaning out of the story:
Spatial relationships among the numbers of items, numbers of characters, and relative sizes mentioned, before Goldilocks encounter
Hans Rosling talks about the importance of good data presentation by showing sheet music from Chopin, and asked if we could tell how beautiful it was. A composer, who specializes in this, can look at the notes and see the beauty. We can't, because all we could see were the notes -- we needed an instrument and someone to play it. Even an electronic keyboard, would help -- they're inexpensive and a child can play them. Too often we get excited about statistics, but all we present to the public are the notes, not the music.
Nathan Yau says, "Approach data visualization as if you were telling a story. What kind of story are you trying to tell? Is it a report or is it a novel? Do you want to convince people that something is necessary? Think character development. Every data point has a story behind it the same way that every character in a book has a past, present, and future. There are interactions and relationships between those data points. It's up to you to find them."
Summary: It's not the data, it's the presentation. Just see what XKCD has to say about it:
(I know I only shared two at the conference, but I meant to show all three and just ran out of time.)
www.ChartChooser.com is one approach that brings the template you choose back into Excel for you.
Andrew Abela's Flow chart for charts should be printed out and hung above your desk.
The Periodic Table of Visualization Methods is more fun than we should be allowed to have on company time. Use your mouse to discover all the options they have for you. The color codes help you determine which of the options fit the data you have and the message you're trying to convey.
You may want to use a number of online tools to share your story. Here are some useful ones you should be aware of:
Swivel is a fun way to create graphs and share data.
Many Eyes is similar in its approach, with different visualization tools available.
Widgenie adds a little movement when you share graphs online.
And for ease of use and the unusual nature of the "data" presented, nothing beats GraphJam. Making It Move
This next section looks at how you can tell stories better when you've got the notion to add a little motion. This may not be the approach you want to take with all the stories you have to tell, but for some messages, movement makes the data come alive.
We mentioned GapMinder earlier. Now click this link to see what GapMinder technology can do to tell multi-faceted, time-series stories that hit close to home.
A couple of years ago, I shared a motion-based graph from Speculative Bubble at the NAPC conference, to warn us to prepare for the coming real estate collapse. Atari's Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, a game program, was used to create a roller coaster that follows the trend lines and lets you "ride" the graph. Compelling, isn't it? (Hold on to something while you watch this!)
Mapping Worlds lets you choose between the USA and the World for data displays. I like this map of the aging population:
And that should transition us to:
Using Maps To Tell Your Story
The first site I wanted to link to was DataPlace. Right now, it's undergoing site maintenance -- I'll add something more to this when it comes back online -- unless I forget, in which case feel free to remind me to do so.
So go to PolicyMap and poke around -- there's a great deal of free data (registration required, but that's free too) and additional information/tools available for those who subscribe.
Instant Atlas is another mapping software tool -- this one's not free, but the samples are really interesting examples of how to use maps to tell stories with data.
Don't forget Google Earth as a free mapping software tool with opportunities to customize the display with your own data. Google Earth is inspiring a great number of mashups, such as CrashStat 2.0 and EveryBlock -- as great examples of what you can do with data and maps to create messages and transmit information.
I don't think I had time to do more than holler out "Check out GraphWise!" in my presentation. I said a little more about it here when it was first launched. It's not loading right for me today, so fans of GraphWise should remind me to say something more about it when I can get back into the site.
I closed the presentation with a rapid-fire look at some imagines that use graphs and images in ways to make people sit up and notice. I called this section:
The challenge we have is to display the data in ways that provoke conversation and promote understanding. I think this chart does that. A similar U.S. map is also available:
Are you still counting to see if I've provided 30 examples of data display techniques in 30 minutes? I'm nearly done. The last section is called: What About the Big Numbers?
Sometimes we have to tell stories with large numbers. Making those stories come alive poses special challenges.
Here's another effort to help people visualize large numbers, this time using rice to tell the stories. (Watch the video at the link!)
Let's finish with Chris Jordan, artist and photographer, as he helps us understand the impact we can make with data -- if we can help people visualize the data in ways that speak to their hearts.
This has been tweeted and retweeted a number of times in the past hour, and just in case you missed it, I thought I'd pass it on. The CitizenServices.Gov site (which you may know as USASerivces.Gov, the Citizen Services Network E-Government initiative led by the General Services Administration’s Office of Citizen Services) has launched its new newsletter -- and it's a must-read for community indicators practitioners.
President Obama's Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies
A section on Democratization of Data including articles such as:
Unfettered Access to Data Can Transform Government?
Technology as a Game-Changer
Information as a Public Good
Citizen Views On Transparency
Another section on Practices at Work in Government, including:
Texas Websites Improve Accountability
Georgia’s Commitment to Customer Service and Good Government
Transparency 2.0
Measuring E-Government 2.0
E-discovery, Transparency and Culture Change
AGA Opens the Doors of Government to the Citizens
And much more, including:
Through a Glass, Darkly. What do we mean by transparency in government?
Transparency in Government Begins Outside
The Collaborative Government: Beyond Transparency in Government
Get Ready for Wiki-Government
Building the Digital Public Square
Open Government Serves Citizens
Whether you use government data in a government performance benchmarking report, community indicators system, or some of both, you need to be paying attention to how the rules are changing in how data flow from the government to you. The same models for data distribution at the federal level, including the assumption that the information is public unless otherwise restricted (instead of the assumption that information is restricted unless pronounced available), can be encouraged at the state and local levels.
Read the newsletter and let me know what you think.
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