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Issue 5—December 1, 2004
Welcome to SAVI Connections, the bi-monthly electronic newsletter regarding the
SAVI system! SAVI Connections provides news about SAVI, demonstrates
various ways in which SAVI can benefit your organization, announces release of
new data, showcases new tools, highlights a variety of SAVI users, and
broadcasts user support and training options. The Polis staff encourages your
ideas and feedback. Please address comments to: skandris@iupui.edu. View past newsletters at: www.savi.org/savii/about/news.aspx
SAVI People: Sharon Kandris SAVI Project Manager “Savvy,” according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is defined as “practical
understanding and know-how; common sense”.
Sharon has extensive experience in planning and GIS technology. The depth of her experience contributes to SAVI’s flexibility as a tool for neighborhood leaders, decision makers, planners, and researchers. During a recent week, she used SAVI to assist Warren Township schools to project enrollments and worked with Dr. Gil Liu, a pediatric researcher at the IU School of Medicine, to use SAVI to study social and environmental impacts on obesity in children. Connecting SAVI to every aspect of the community’s life is a goal Sharon has for this nationally recognized system. She is working with Indianapolis Arts Council, City of Indianapolis, and Marion County Health Department on new and expanded applications. As SAVI Project Manager, Sharon recognizes that the more people who use SAVI, the more valuable the system is to the community. A dedicated marathon runner, Sharon recently competed in—and finished—the Chicago Marathon. She also excels in wedding cake baking and design. However, between running and baking, Sharon still finds time to make SAVI one of the best community information systems in the country. |
Last month the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, published “Informing Our Nation,” a major report on the potential for a national indicators system to measure progress on a variety of important social issues. In its 18-month study, GAO staff identified twenty leading local and regional indicator systems for in-depth interviews to glean lessons for a national plan. Criteria for selection included comprehensiveness, recognition by experts, and sustainability, with the GAO’s choices confirmed by national associations representing state and local governments. SAVI was among the leading systems identified through this process. In November 2003, two SAVI staff members met with the GAO investigative team to share information from the Central Indiana system and to make recommendations. The GAO’s survey revealed that approximately 25 percent of the nation’s population now had free access to some form of a community information system. It concluded that “these systems are a noteworthy development with potentially broad applicability.” Key benefits cited by the study were “enhancing collaboration and helping to inform decision making and improve research.” The systems provided information about society that is not currently available to most people. Comprehensive systems, the GAO concluded, are primarily either learning-oriented or outcome-oriented. It identified SAVI as the former. These systems “enable citizens, researchers, and leaders to learn more about and monitor conditions in their jurisdictions,” with improved decision-making as a desired result. Outcome-oriented systems supported a strategic plan agreed upon by people and institutions in a given area and monitored progress toward established goals. The primary challenges faced by community indicators systems are “(1) gaining and sustaining stakeholders’ support, (2) securing and maintaining adequate funding, (3) agreeing on the types and number of indicators to include, (4) obtaining indicators or data for the system, and (5) effectively leveraging information technology.” The design features needed to overcome these challenges included a number of recommendations offered by the SAVI staff to the GAO researchers. Among these are (1) establishing a clear purpose, (2) defining the target audiences and their needs, (3) ensuring accountability, (4) actively involving stakeholders in governance, (5) securing stable and diverse funding, (6) attracting and retaining qualified staff, and (7) having an effective communication strategy. For the complete GAO report go to: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d051.pdf.
A recent Government Accountability Office report identified SAVI as one of the nation’s foremost community indicator systems. The term “community indicator system” is a variant of “community information system,” or CIS, the tag more frequently used in the growing national movement to develop accessible information for communities in making decisions about their future. Over the past decade a number of national associations have emerged to address the challenges and opportunities offered by these information systems. Among the leading groups are National Infrastructure for Community Statistics (NICS) Community of Practice, Community Indicators Consortium (CIC), and the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership. NNIP is a consortium of 22 cities that meets under the auspices of the Urban Institute, a major Washington, DC think tank. Sharon Kandris, SAVI Project Manager (profiled this month in SAVI People), sits on the group’s executive board. Three types of community information systems exist in the U.S.—comprehensive, indicator, and topic-based. SAVI is perhaps the nation’s oldest and largest comprehensive system. It has existed since 1994, moved to the Web in 1999, and now contains more than 60 gigabytes of data on an eleven-county metropolitan area. Other cities have recognized SAVI’s leadership nationally. During the past year, a SAVI management team met with counterparts in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Phoenix, Arizona to help them think through the issues involved in developing a community information system. During a two-day trip this past October, five civic leaders from Billings, Montana visited SAVI to observe the system in operation and to learn about the options available for a smaller metropolitan area with significant rural and Native American population. In previous years, community leaders in Detroit and Nashville, Tennessee have sought to learn from SAVI’s experience. More recently, discussions with civic and government leaders in Belfast, Northern Ireland have led to requests for more information about how a SAVI-type system could work in an international setting. |
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