There has been a growing awareness of the need to integrate community indicators and performance measurement (CI-PM) efforts at the community level to better assess the position and progress of communities quality of life and to better engage community citizens and other key stakeholders in the development and use of community indicators and performance measures by governmental and non-profit organizations.

Following a regional conference organized by Sustainable Seattle and King County in 2004 (The twain shall meet) that drew the attention of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the conversation intensified and received widespread visibility  at the 2005 CIC Annual Conference, sponsored in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, with over 14 different presentations, workshops, and forums addressed the topic. The CIC subsequently convened a panel of experts on community indicators and government performance measurement in Arlington, Virginia, in December 2006.

Under a grant from the Sloan Foundation, CIC promoted, advocated for, and developed a community of practice around CI-PM integration, and for engaging citizens and other key community stakeholders in the process.

CIC continues to sustain the CI-PM Learning Community and maintain and expand the information resources available on our website now that the original grant is ending. We invite all those interested in the integration of community indicators and performance measures to join CICas a member today and participate in our learning community.

CI-PM Integration Resources

  • Creating Stronger Linkages between Community Indicator Projects and Government Performance Measurement Efforts: published in 2007. The report identified the benefits to be gained from such CI-PM linkages as well as four barriers to more effective integration and strategies for overcoming those barriers. A common theme of the benefits, barriers and strategies for better integration is the importance of collaboration among community indicator and performance measurement projects as it leads to improving citizen engagement in using information for better community decision-making.

  • Real Stories
    Finding and documenting “Real Stories” of communities that have tried—successfully and not-so-successfully—to integrate community indicators and performance measures is vital to helping to increasing the knowledge of CI-PM integration. The Real Stories are intended to provide real life examples of the advantages to both community indicator and organizational performance measurement projects as a result of integrating these two types of efforts:

    • community indicators would have a greater influence on what governments and organizations do to improve a community and
    • governments’ and organizations’ performance measures would be more relevant to the community conditions that are of the greatest concern to citizens and other key community stakeholders.

    CIC’s most recent Real Stories of Community Indicators-Performance Measures Integration are available to download as Adobe PDF files. These Real Stories are:

    (1)    Improving Community Conditions: A Framework Linking Community Indicators, City Budgets, Government Performance Measures and Performance Management in Albuquerque, New Mexico (Click  Here for the full document)

    (2)    Making Children’s Lives Better: Integrating Community Indicators and Performance Measures in Broward County, Florida (Click Here for the full document)

    (3)    Citizen Driven Performance: Truckee Meadows Tomorrow and Washoe County, Nevada (Click Here for the full document)

    (4)     One County Vision: King County’s Incremental Approach to CI-PM Integration (Click Here for the full document)

    (5)     Plan It Calgary: A Mature Integration Model for Community Design in Calgary, Alberta, Canada (Click Here for the full document)

    (6)     Whole Child Leon Healthy Infant Partnership (Click Here for the full document)

  • CI-PM Descriptive Model
    The CI-PM Working Group developed a draft Descriptive Maturity Model of CI-PM integration. This model identifies the key characteristics of community indicators-performance measures integration and provides a continuum of the integration process starting with separate and distinct community indicators and performance measurement efforts within a community to fully integrated community indicators-performance measurement within a community. It is not intended to be a prescriptive model but serve more as a guide for communities to identify where they may exist along the continuum.

    The model is designed around the concept that some communities may already have such integration efforts underway while some communities may have separate and distinct community indicators and performance measurement efforts and still others may have either a community indicators effort or a performance measurement effort underway, but not both. The current model is viewed as a work in progress as more practitioners provide their comments and ideas regarding the model. If you would like to provide your own insights, ideas and comments on the model please send us an email.