WELLINGTON – The Rural Ontario Institute (ROI), the Ontario Trillium Foundation and the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness have launched the rural community well-being dashboard on Oct. 30.
“The idea was to develop some kind of digital system or tool that would help communities be able to benchmark their current status and monitor and measure progress over time,” said ROI analyst Danielle LeTang.
The dashboard will feature around 60 indicators (groups of data) from about 10 data sources.
It will include data on mental health, age, population, climate change and weather patterns.
The ROI hopes the dashboard will improve access to data and evidence for decision making in rural communities.
According to the ROI, the data will help rural communities establish baselines, identify priorities for change and research, share stories, celebrate success, reveal data gaps for decision making, and monitor progress.
LeTang says they intend to update the data annually, but only if the underlying data source is up to date.
“It really depends on the update schedule of the underlying data source,” said LeTang.
“Census data is on a five-year cycle, so we can’t update that until the next census is released.
“To us the biggest measure of success is whether or not the dashboard is being used by communities, and for that, we hope to develop case studies so that we know how communities are using the data,” said LeTang.
The ROI is hosting a webinar on Oct. 30 to launch the new dashboard and answer community questions.
Register for the webinar at ruralontarioinstitute.ca.
