2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

8 Strengthening Communities with Neighborhood Data
can reveal groups of individuals in great distress even when things are
generally improving for the population overall. Indeed, the existence of
inequality of human well-being is often starkly revealed when indicators
in one community are compared with another or with national or statewide
averages. Such differences often provide justification for changes
in public policy, program delivery, or distribution of resources. Disparities
in human well-being can guide efforts to mobilize communities to
act on improving conditions for themselves. And local indicators that
reveal pockets of concern about particular groups can be used to target
resources to areas where they are needed most.
The Structure and Audience of This Book
The book’s chapters are written by the authors. Most chapters are followed
by one or more essays that have been solicited from experts in
the field. The essays are not commentaries on the chapters but, rather,
provide original material reflecting the experience and thinking of the
contributors.
• Chapter 2 tells the institutional side of the story. It first describes the
roles being played by local institutions and how they have changed
as the information revolution has unfolded. It then describes the
NNIP partner organizations: who they are, what they do, and how
they do it.
• The data and technical sides are documented in chapter 3. The
chapter begins by reviewing relevant data that are now available
for community work and the way the task of data assembly has
changed since 1996 (including the role of the open data movement).
It then examines the main advances in technology that are
transforming practice in all aspects of the field.
• Chapter 4 introduces a framework for considering how community
information can be applied. It first describes the multiple uses
of indicators foreseen when the social indicators movement began,
and then discusses five basic types of applications that illustrate
how community information can be made useful in local decisionmaking
today.
• The next two chapters review how the newly available administrative
data are being applied to achieve practical ends in efforts to