Indicators are pieces of information that reflect some larger system (although that "system" is often not explicitly considered or defined). Their primary function is to communicate something about that system to an audience (or audiences) that are unlikely or unable (for a variety of reasons) to spend significant amounts of time seeking comprehensive, detailed information about that system. The number of communities seeking to develop and use indicators has grown significantly over the past decade, becoming a core tool for hundreds of community improvement processes across the country (and world) and cutting across sustainability, quality of life, healthy communities, and other frameworks for organizing improvement efforts. At least one thing is common across these various efforts – people presume that the development and reporting of indicators will help create positive change within their community.

For the past ten years, I have been working with a wide variety of places, organizations and people to develop community indicators, performance measurement systems, and information-based collaborative processes to effect change. This paper, while drawing upon the work, research and writings of others, is primarily an attempt to reflect upon and synthesize my experiences and observations, and to offer some propositions regarding how to more effectively conceive of and integrate indicators within a larger framework for building healthier, resilient and more sustainable communities.

Most people still seem to approach community information systems as decision-support tools, the primary purpose of which is to bring information to decision makers in ways that directly inform particular decisions. For example, I have seen many people and projects seeking to develop indicators as a way to provide answers. Rarely, however, is there a case where participants in these processes can point to a specific indicator or piece of information and say with confidence "I changed my decision based upon that."

Throughout my work, however, I have observed participants in these community efforts

• Explore and create a better understanding among participants about the different legitimate ways of viewing or defining "the system" and how the system "works";
• Identify and come to agreement upon the various valued outcomes, goals, visions community members have with regards to the system;
• Engage each other in discussions about what information should be collected and reported;
• Become more informed about where data/information resides, who collects it and why, and how to access and interpret that information;
• Come together to discuss what that information means for the community;
• Develop new relationships and networks;
• Develop new understanding among community members of each other and key issues affecting the community; and
• Discover new abilities among individual citizens and community organizations.

It is this "learning and capacity-building" effect of indicator development and use, often viewed as "secondary" or intangible, that I believe to be the most significant and potentially powerful effect of community information systems. From the simultaneous development of shared meaning and stronger networks of caring and trust, action has emerged and been sustained in ways nobody in the project would have predicted.

This paper will explore some of the emerging lessons regarding how indicators can be effective for promoting positive change in communities. Following a brief review of these lessons, it will review of the characteristics of communities that reflect and learn as they engage in community development/action, and then consider how the development and use of community indicators can be part a larger system for "community learning."

Why have communities, regions, organizations and networks expended enormous quantities of financial and human resources to develop sets of indicators? While indicators can be used for a wide range of purposes, the most basic and universal answer is simple – "They know they want the indicators to become part of a public dialogue and somehow to help communities and regions become better at self-management and more self-conscious about the direction they are going. They want the indicators to be influential."

Over the past few years, there have been a number of gatherings of indicator practitioners aimed in part at identifying the various elements of both indicator development processes and products that contribute to positive results. From my review and synthesis of the results from these gatherings, there appears to be some convergence among practitioners upon a set of emerging propositions regarding when, how, and what makes indicators effective. In general, these propositions tend to cluster around three aspects: (a) the processes for selecting and developing the indicators, (b) characteristics of the indicators themselves, and (c) the systems and processes for using the indicators.

Indicators are more likely to be used and have an impact on community decisions if, within and through the process of selecting and developing the indicators:

1. Participants develop agreement on:
   1. System scope and boundaries
   2. Project purpose, audiences, & desired outcomes
2. The indicators are linked to desired outcomes (i.e., community vision and goals). And, if these outcomes do not already exist, community members take the time to articulate a vision or set of goals for their community.
3. Both the intended users as well as those with a "technical" knowledge of the system are engaged in the selection of the indicators.
4. Project leadership or conveners view the process as a key opportunity to build capacity and social capital among community members (i.e., build trust and learning through the process).
5. Individual & organizational (government, business, non-profit) "champions" – change catalysts and implementers – are identified, developed and nurtured.
6. Opportunities are taken to engage and learn from organizations & agencies with outcome-based management experience.

Indicators are more likely to be used and have an impact on community decisions if, the indicator system includes:

1. Indicators for important elements or relationships of the system, as identified and defined by community members and, specifically, the intended users
2. A mix of indicator "types," including those that help identify "root causes" of problems.
3. Indicators that are clear and easy to understand or interpret by their intended audience.
4. Measures that are feasible (i.e., based upon data currently available), but with the understanding that they will be improved over time
5. Sets of indicators that enable users to make comparisons over time and/or across places, and associated narratives that make the implications or "stories" more transparent.

And finally, indicators are more likely to be used and have an impact on community decisions if, within and through the process of using the indicators:

1. Project leadership find or provide resources for specific planned opportunities, processes, or events for the intended audience to use the indicators and provide feedback on their relevance and utility (i.e., don't assume that if you report them they will be used).
2. They are embedded within or linked to existing decision & planning processes. Rather than having general, non-specific discussions regarding what the indicators say and what should be done, they are part of a more explicit and formalized "plan-do-check-adapt" cycle with links to goals, targets, and specific decisions or policies.
3. Different reporting formats and processes are used which are appropriate to the particular needs and timing of the intended users.
4. Networks of local organizations that are developing & using measures are created or nurtured so that they can share learning and resources and pursue opportunities for collaboration.
5. Project and community leadership understand role that indicators can help create change, but that other elements and capacities also need to be in place; indicators are but one piece of a larger "change model" for community improvement.

While these are all reasonable propositions, they remain aimed primarily at the level of practice. This not meant as a criticism, but rather as an observation that they need to be complemented by some larger discussion of how indicators "fit" with and support different models for promoting community efficacy and change.

As noted by two observers of past and present efforts to develop indicators, "these efforts . . . have relied on unrealistic expectations and a simplistic model of how information drives policy and public action." Noting that indicators can and do have influence on decision-making, Innes and Booher suggest that:

Innes and Booher go on to describe eight lessons from past research and review of indicator efforts that describe when and how indicators have been influential, including:

• Indicators do not drive policy, but rather influence it through a process of conversion and learning;
• Indicators primary impact occurs through and during the process of developing and discussing them;
• Their influence is felt most through a "collaborative learning process" as those who develop and use them jointly make sense of why the indicators are important, what they mean, and their implications for changes in actions and policies;
• The full range of anticipated users (i.e., those whose decisions one hopes will be influenced by the indicators) must be involved in the selection, development of and collaborative discussions regarding the meaning of the indicators.

Their focus on indicators as catalysts for collective learning leading to collaborative action is consistent with the more specific propositions emerging from practitioners. It also provides a link to another body of work looking at the capacities of communities (and their members) that enable them to learn and adapt as they engage in efforts to improve their well-being. It is this notion of "community learning" that provides some interesting possibilities for considering how indicators can and do help create stronger, healthier, and more resilient communities.

The idea of a "learning organization" has been with us for long enough now that it has become part of the normal set of terms we use to discuss the characteristics and capacities of effective, high-performing private sector companies and public sector agencies. Over the past five years, a few scholars and practitioners have begun to combine the findings and propositions from work in the areas of learning organizations, community capacity, social capital, adult education and adaptive management, and suggest how these have particular relevance for considering why and how some communities seem to be more effective and "high-performing" than others. Specifically, they have begun to identify an emerging set of qualities and characteristics of communities that learn and, as a result, are more effective at adapting to external forces and in shaping their future development path.

Based upon an initial review and synthesis of this work, I have identified nine characteristics of a community that learns, including:

What is the relationship between developing and using indicators and building the capacity for community learning? Perhaps there does not need to be any. Certainly a community could develop indicators without explicitly considering or building a fuller system for community learning. Likewise, a community could seek to build many of the above capacities associated with community learning without developing an indicator system.

The synergy of the two systems, and activities to build those systems, however, should not be ignored. In the case of indicators, it appears that they have the greatest effect where they are approached as tools for effectively raising questions, providing the basis for people to deliberate, and to help communities come together to develop shared meaning about important issues. Clearly, to realize their full potential the indicators are just one element of a larger set of capacities for community change. They are one piece of a community learning system.

As we consider the nine elements above that begin to describe a learning community, an indicator system can play at least one direct role – as a central part of a community feedback systems (#3). At the simplest level, general outcome indicators (those most often found in community-level reports) offer an initial set of feedback to community members regarding whether or not their community is moving towards or away from their vision of a desired future. Increasingly, we are seeing communities develop more sophisticated and detailed indicator systems with measures that link back not only to community-level outcomes, but also neighborhood conditions, program or organizational outcomes, and even information that can be used in very short timeframes by individual decision makers.

However, as we have noted throughout this paper, the value and benefits of a system of indicators is often realized not so much from the simple presence of the indicators, but through the processes for developing and using them. For example,

• as participants in a community indicator effort develop agreement on what the indicators should be and what sets of decisions they hope the indicators will inform, the discussions can help surface the partial knowledge each of us have (#1), develop capacities for collaboration (#9), and begin the process of taking time for reflection (#8);
• as community indicator efforts seek to engage and learn from community members and local organizations with relevant experiences in outcome measurement, new networks are developed which broaden the flow of resources and information into and through the community (#4);
• as indicators are used and linked to specific planning and decision processes through some form of "plan-do-check-adapt" cycle, this encourages a culture of inquiry (#8), exposes incomplete knowledge regarding cause and effect relationships (# 1), and reinforces connections between specific actions and community outcomes (#6).

As we look at each of the "best practices" for indicator development and use (Section II, above), we can identify how they support one or more of the nine characteristics of community learning. Similarly, we can go through the inverse exercise and see how each of the nine community learning capacities facilitates more effective development and use of indicators.

As noted in the beginning, the primary function of indicators is to communicate information about complex systems (in this case, community health or sustainability) in order to promote decisions and actions that will improve those systems. As outlined above, it appears that a primary mechanism for this is through the learning – both individual and collective – that occurs as community members engage with one another in the various discussions and tasks necessary for selecting, building and using the indicators. While the various characteristics of communities that learn suggest the capacities necessary for community indicators to have their full effect as tools for community improvement, they do not lead us to any particular change process or model.

A recently released report from the Rockefeller Foundation may provide another piece to the puzzle. In Communicating for Social Change: An Integrated Model for Measuring the Process and Its Outcomes, Figueroa et al offer the Integrated Model of Communication for Social Change (IMCFSC) which "describes an iterative process where 'community dialogue' and 'collective action' work together to produce social change in a community that improves the health and welfare of all of its members." The model includes three main elements:

1. The "catalyst" – some event, person, or information that in turn leads to
2. Community dialogue and collective action producing
3. Individual and social change.

Within each one of these broader elements, the authors describe a range of steps and activities that can occur to move people and communities through the model (see Figure 1 below).

Without going into a fuller discussion of the model, it seems to suggest at least three potentially useful areas for further consideration and discussion among indicator and community change practitioners.

First, whereas the nine capacities for community learning provide a "structural" description, the IMCFSC begins to provide a dynamic flow of events and activities leading to individual and social change. While the concept of "learning" is not specifically addressed or used within the IMCFSC, it seems not a step too far both to link the capacities for community learning as the characteristics that facilitate movement through the IMCFSC and to view the mechanism by which all of this occurs as social interactions that lead to learning – individual and social/community.

Second, the role of the catalyst is critical in initiating the flow of activities through the model. While their discussion of how some "stimulus" actually triggers the "community dialogue – collective action" phase is relatively brief, it is not hard to imagine (or observe in many communities across the country!) community indicators as a catalyst for community discussion. "Once this discussion is initiated it may unfold in several directions: from simply creating a greater sense of dissatisfaction, to inciting a community conflict or to cooperative action that helps solve the problem." It seems the key question is how and when do indicators as a catalyst lead down the latter path (i.e., cooperative action). I would suggest as an initial proposition that the presence of the nine elements for learning communities would make it more likely that "indicators-as-catalysts" would lead to cooperative action.

Third, the IMCFSC helps to focus our attention on the necessary synergy between individual and social change (or, to use different terminology, individual and collective learning). As Figueroa et al observe, many individual behavior change programs in the public health field typically are designed to achieve outcomes associated with a single, specific aspect of health (e.g., condom promotion for HIV/AIDS prevention). "As a consequence, some individual behavior change may even be limited to a short duration in time unless other measures are taken to ensure that such changes are institutionalized or self-sustaining." On the other hand, if the focus is only on "social change", the capacity or potential for improvement may increase but there may be little or no actual changes in the health and well-being of individuals. In short, what is needed for sustained change is both individual and collective learning.

It has been the intent of this paper to review and reflect upon emerging lessons regarding how and when community indicators can be effective tools for community improvement. In doing so, it seemed necessary to look more broadly than just the community indicators field itself and into broader discussions regarding social communication, feedback and learning as a mechanism for change, and capacities for community learning.

While it is not the intent of this paper to reach conclusions, there does appear to be at least one theme worth including as a concluding proposition. Given the complexity of how communities function and the uncertainty regarding cause-and-effect relationships in the problems they face, we need to design flexible, resilient systems that seek to engage broader sets of people (a) in sharing and making collective meaning with their knowledge and perspectives, (b) in generating shared hypotheses or "best practices" regarding community improvement strategies, (c) reflecting on and learning from the results of those strategies and (d) adjusting their plans, strategies and practices. While indicators are fundamental components of these systems, we must look to create and sustain the broader sets of capacities for community learning if indicators are to be effective tools for community improvement.

From Maria Elena Figueroa, D. Lawrence Kincaid, Manju Rani, Gary Lewis; Communication for Social Change: An Integrated Model for Measuring the Process and Its Outcomes, Rockefeller Foundation (2002)