The monitoring pages are to enable council staff, elected members, other agencies and interested members of the public to access the most up-to-date information as it is made available. Individual indicator sheets are available to be printed out.
Occasionally over time, we will compile this information into a snapshot report which will analyse all the indicators for a specific outcome.
What is monitoring?
The deliberate act of observation and surveillance over time with a defined purpose. It is not just data collection, it is a systematic process involving:
- planned and repeated data collection
- analysis
- interpolation
- reporting
- recommendations for action.
To improve outcomes and manage communities effectively, decision-makers need information about where things are at currently, about developing trends and pressure points and about the impacts or effects of interventions or policies that have been implemented.
Monitoring is of critical importance in the Community Outcome process as it provides a picture of whether things are improving, remaining static, fluctuating or declining over time. This allows us to assess the state of progress toward achieving our outcomes.
Trend monitoring helps us to understand the complexities of the world around us by organising the wide range of potential information available to us. Monitoring is therefore an essential ingredient of robust decision making. Ultimately we measure outcome progress to improve the future of our communities.
What are indicators?
Indicators are flags or summary signals that identify change. They help us understand complex systems by identifying measures that provide useful information about the whole system without having to capture its full complexity. The measures are the actual pieces of information or data used to gauge an indicator.
We all use indicators to help us understand the world around us and to control the ways we respond to events. An example of an everyday indicator is the fuel gauge in your car. The fuel gauge shows you how much petrol is left in your car. If the gauge shows the tank is empty, you know it's time to fill up.
Indicators provide the first step in the information gathering process. However, analysis and interpretation are limited to general comments, highlighting areas that need further investigation and in-depth analysis.
The structure of the monitoring programme
Due to the complexity of issues covered by our Community Outcomes, a three-tier monitoring structure has been developed to assess progress. The hierarchical approach allows us to organise the indicators in a framework that is understandable for a wide range of audiences:
- Tier one : Headline indicators
Headline indicators will be used for public reporting on outcome progress. They provide a basic overview of progress toward achieving the Community Outcomes. These indicators are closely aligned to our Standards for Success. Each measure will be updated regularly through Indicator Reporting Sheets to assess trends and emerging issues.
- Tier two : Key indicators
These are a comprehensive set of core measures, which provide greater detail to the headline indicators. They are also closely related to our Standards for Success. These measures will be updated regularly through Indicator Reporting Sheets to assess trends and emerging issues.
- Tier three : Secondary indicators
These indicators sit behind the headline and key measures and provide an even greater level of contextual information to support decision making on complex issues. Data will be collected on measures in the secondary set but will not be reported on directly. Secondary data will be available in Excel spreadsheet form for monitoring and information provision purposes.
For each indicator there are one or more measures that describe a specific aspect of that indicator. For example, the indicator 'Criminal Offending' is composed of measures relating to total offences, burglary offences, violent offence, sexual offences and so on.
Layout of indicator sheets
Each indicator sheet has the following elements:
the name of the community outcome
- name of the indicator and states indicator tier (Headline or Key indicators)
- title of the measure with an accompanying graph, table or map
- key points: describes the data e.g. any trend, level, relationship or pattern displayed in the data
- What this is about: describes what the measure relates to. It will also describe who or what has been surveyed
- data limitations: describes the extent to which a measure can be used and any underlying restrictions or limitations to the data. For example levels of undercount or comparisons over time
- standards for success: these describe what the outcome will look like when it is being achieved.
