2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

The Potential and the Way Forward 405
changes in neighborhood conditions under varying assumptions about
economic conditions and program actions). 5
However, given the capacity of the players and the competition that
now exists in this environment, we believe these activities are likely
to move forward on their own without much outside support. The
only role we recommend for the coalition is to monitor advances in a
coherent way and wrap the results into its ongoing campaign to keep
local practitioners and decisionmakers well-informed of the state of
the art in this field. For these audiences, extra efforts need to be made
to consider and elaborate the practical implications of such advances
for local work.
5. Develop capacity to educate future policymakers and practitioners
in the methods of data-driven decisionmaking.
Universities and community colleges that train people for careers
in local policy and program development (primarily schools of public
management and urban planning) already have courses in GIS and
quantitative methods. However, approaches to data-driven decisionmaking
such as those emerging in some NNIP settings are typically too
new to have found their way into those curricula.
These approaches go far beyond basic statistical concepts and techniques.
They are more rooted in policy analysis and explain how analysts
and planners set the stage for strategic decisionmaking in complex
institutional settings. They cover how today’s richer array of neighborhood
indicators can support more nuanced and realistic situation
analysis (fact-based assessments of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
and threats) than was possible in the past. They also cover more effective
methods of quantitatively weighing alternative courses of action
to address different community situations and making choices based
on those analyses. Courses covering this content should be developed
for traditional university settings and also as professional development
modules and stand-alone online classes.
The coalition should mount an effort to document advances in these
areas. Documentation and communication should occur at varying levels,
ranging from vignette-length descriptions of innovative practices to
detailed how-to guides. In-depth materials could be adapted for use in
university curricula. The coalition should expect to devote considerable
energy to communicating about these resources with relevant university
faculty and their associations.