CAN Dashboard has many partners that fall into a variety of categories; government, health, education, business and workforce. St. Edward’s University is an example of an education partner.

The purpose of Austin CAN is to increase community awareness and to track whether Austin’s social issues are improving. In 2008, a common vision was agreed upon. In 2009, the “indicators” were selected. In 2010, CAN Dashboard was essentially created.

The indicators or 4 areas of well-being are: we are safe, just and engaged, our basic needs are being met, we are healthy and we achieve our full potential.

A new feature called “Equity Analysis” is used to measure whether things are moving closer to the common vision. One facet of Equity Analysis is analyzing updated data information.

The “Annual Unemployment Rates” graph,  showed that unemployment has been decreasing since 2010 (the Great Recession). However, with each data analysis comes “highs” and “lows”. A high is a positive piece of information or result. A low is an exception to the data or a negative result that is not apparent. In this example, a high would be that unemployment is down to 10%. A low is that the jobs being created, don’t pay for what is needed to meet basic needs. Raul Alvarez interestingly explained that the data shows a great improvement, but some individuals don’t see that improvement.  After the presentation, I realized that I have unintentionally considered the 4 areas of well-being in the past. I never knew why I thought of those things or how they could be simplified. I feel relieved that I now have an explanation for something that I have always pondered.

Exploring local wicked problems directly connects us to the data or information. (It hits close to home)

Once we have an understanding of the problems close to us, we can step back and recognize similar issues all around the world.

image obtained from http://austin.com