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Civic Indicators
A relatively new concept in community indicator work is that of Civic
Indicators. As with other types of indicators that measure a community's
health, civic indicators measure a community's civic health. A community
with a higher degree of civic health has, for example, high voter turnout,
effective strategies to engage the public, skilled candidates to run
for elected offices, abundant and constructive participation of its
citizens (of all ages, ethnic backgrounds and economic levels), and
strong partnerships that create innovative approaches to challenging
issues. Civic Indicators allow communities to measure, track and improve
the community's civic health on an ongoing basis, and, herefore provide
the capacity to thrive as challenges change over time.
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Businesses frequently look at "organizational effectiveness"
as a means of increasing profitability, effectiveness and efficiencies.
Time studies, process improvements, total quality management,
and a host of other tools may be applied in these efforts. Often,
the results lead to more productivity, and greater returns. This
intentional look at the internal aspects of an organization can
take many different directions. Sometimes, smart companies will
include employee satisfaction surveys, reviewing staff retention
and turnover rates, creating succession plans, conducting team
building exercises, and measuring how departments interact and
work with other departments on projects. When companies are involved
with this level of evaluating their own internal processes, they
are in fact, looking at the company's internal capacities.
Civic Indicators, similarly, are focused on a community's
internal capacities. Are citizens happy? Do community members
remain in the community or leave? Do high school graduates return
to the community after graduating from college? How do government,
nonprofits, citizens and business work with each other for the
good of the community? When we begin to measure these aspects,
we can begin to track the civic health of the community. Just
as businesses thrive when attention is paid to these critical
factors, so too, do communities.
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To fully understand the difference between Civic Indicators and other
types of indicators, the discussion must begin with a look at civic
infrastructure. Defined as those formal and informal relationships,
networks and capacities that communities use to make decisions and solve
problems, civic infrastructure entails the skills and processes a community
utilizes to deal with the critical issues it faces-how decisions are
made, how citizens interact with one another and government, and how
challenges are acknowledged and addressed. The quality of the civic
infrastructure determines the overall community health-economic, social
and civic. This infrastructure under-girds a community's ability to
resolve issues, be proactive, and create a successful and healthy community.
It is the base upon which a successful community is constructed. The
civic infrastructure has to be developed before a community will be
able to deal with its most difficult challenges. Whether the specific
issue is a quality school system, an air pollution problem, or lack
of adequate low-income housing, the need for effective problem solving
and leadership is critical. Communities must have the capacity to solve
the problems they face. And, just as with a community's physical infrastructure
(telephone lines, sewer systems, bridges, sidewalks and streets), if
the civic infrastructure has deteriorated, it must be rebuilt.
NCL developed the Civic Index to help communities achieve full potential
by evaluating and improving their civic infrastructures. The Civic Index
provides a framework through which communities can increase their problem-solving
capacity. It provides a method and a process for first identifying strengths
and weaknesses and then structuring collaborative solutions to problems.
It offers a structured guideline that helps communities assess four
major categories of civic health, including:
- the desired future,
- the roles for all sectors in community governance,
- the ability to work together, and
- the community's ability to solve problems.
This assessment and planning tool can be the first step in an ongoing
process of measuring a community's capacity. However, the ability to
track that progress over time, requires a customized set of Civic
Indicators for each community.
Until recently, civic indicators have been limited to a few measures,
such as the number of registered voters, and percent that actually vote.
That void encouraged NCL to begin the process of developing civic indicators
to further communities' capacities to quantifiably track and measure
progress.
With the assistance of a grant from the Kauffman Foundation, NCL worked
with select communities to pilot this idea. The learning from this pilot
project follows in line with what we already know about indicators in
general: each community must develop a set of civic indicators that
is appropriate to that community; determining what is "appropriate
to each community" requires community engagement; the quality of
indicators is much more salient than the quantity; it is most important
to define those indicators that reveal causes and relationships; and
successful data collection and tracking requires a great deal of resources.
There were also some new learnings as well. The most significant challenge
for communities was differentiating characteristics of community health
from civic health. Civic health focuses on the capacity to achieve,
rather than the achievement. However, civic indicators can further a
community indicators process by assisting in identifying the underlying
reasons that a community does or does not seem to make progress on solving
some issues.
Ben Warner of Jacksonville Community Council Inc. summed it up when
he stated, "A community may have the capacity to address growing
small businesses, but it is much harder, and requires a stronger capacity
to grow minority owned small businesses. It requires strong civic health
to address many types of underlying issues."
The process of civic indicator development is a challenging one, however
the benefits of undertaking this effort can enhance a communities ability
to make great changes. By fully developing the capacity for addressing
issues, other challenges can more readily be met.
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