Building Foundations
During this phase, which sees a foundational group start to work together to map the community ecosystem, collaboration and data sharing are key to building up the full picture. With agreements to work together in place between at least some community stakeholders, mapping the data ecosystem is the first step.
Building on the learnings from the Data Discovery and Data Walk exercises done in Phase 1, your collaborative can first look at what data they have now that can be shared between all collaborating parties and put data sharing agreements in place. It’s important that these data sharing agreements follow a clear governance structure so all parties are protected, data security and privacy maintained.
The next step is to review the identified data gaps and which custodians could be approached to share their data with the community to fill that gap. Formal approaches to custodians need to be made, followed by setting data sharing agreements in place, once the data sharing is approved. Learn more about making custodian approaches and data sharing governance via the Building Data Architecture page below.
Setting in place these data mechanisms will allow the collaborative to set baseline measurements to allow progress and impact to be tracked through the change cycle.
Many communities are building customised data infrastructure, or ‘Knowledge Hubs‘ at this phase of the change cycle. This ensures that once all the required data is brought together, it can be stored, shared, analysed and collaborated on via a single platform. This single access point solution is allowing communities to become more data-driven and responsive, taking action and refining programs and services quickly in response to changing data.
How Data Benefits this stage of the Change Cycle
- Data and stories are gathered to get a clear picture of outcomes and inequities
- Data analyses allows for alignment on challenges and agreement that change is needed
- Mapping of community systems, assets, actors, networks & investments that impact outcomes
- Community voice (qualitative data) is respected as credible evidence
- Mechanisms are put in place to share data between community, agencies & Government
- Data is used to build an evidence base to understand community inequities and entrenched disadvantage root causes
Tools and Resources
Community Case Studies
Greater Shepparton Lighthouse Project, Greater Shepparton, VIC
The Lighthouse Project wanted to understand trends over time to identify changes since the preparation of the State of Our Children’s Report for Greater Shepparton in 2014. The team also wanted to compare data for Greater Shepparton with similar Local Government Areas to identify what approaches were having the most impact and why. Today, Seer is used to easily access and interrogate data for community conversations, strategic planning and reporting to Government and philanthropic bodies. It is also used to tell community stories with data.