Community indicators report

Takeaways

• In response to a growing appreciation that there is more to being successful than just boosting economic output, we monitor a broad range of factors that contribute to community wellbeing and sustainability.
• Community indicators are used to develop social, cultural, environmental, governance and economic policy. They are sourced from a range of primary research efforts, such as our own surveys and records, and secondary sources such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics Census and NSW Health surveys.
• Updates are collected on an ongoing basis and frequency varies from 6-monthly to 5-year periods, depending on the data source. Data are compared against initial or ‘baseline’ measures and analysed for change over time.

Research framework

The community indicators framework was developed in 2011 in partnership with the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney and the McCaughey Research Centre from the University of Melbourne.

The community indicators project is based on comprehensive research and international and local best practice. It went on public exhibition in early 2012, was amended in response to public feedback and adopted later that year. The first edition of the report was populated and published in 2016.

2024 report

The community wellbeing Indicators report has 2 main functions:

1. Taking an evidence-based approach to monitor changing trends and issues affecting the community over time, to inform policy development and service provision planning.
2. Acting as a source-book, highlighting primary datasets we manage, and linking readers to the widely-distributed secondary sources used.

The report is not a scorecard for any particular service, policy, or agency function.

The community wellbeing indicators 2024 report includes over 120 measures tracking social progress since 2006. Roughly half of the measures in the report come from primary sources not reported elsewhere – this is data collected from our surveys, counts, and monitors. Secondary data in the report come from open-data repositories and reports from agencies such as NSW Health, Department of Education, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The 2024 report focusses on domains 1-4 of the community indicators framework:

1. Healthy, safe and inclusive communities
2. Culturally rich and vibrant communities
3. Democratic and engaged communities
4. Dynamic and resilient local economies

Our targets and data relating to the 5th domain, sustainable environments, can be found in the biannual green reports.