Half a million Australians will tell us.
ANDI will gather the views of up to half a million Australians to help shape the index and identify the things we should measure under each of the domains. This activity will be conducted over the coming years of development of the domains and index. ANDI partners with a wide range of community organisations, peak bodies, businesses, local governments, faith-based organisations and media to run multiple events and campaigns to gather the views of Australians on what they think matters for Australia’s future wellbeing and progress towards it.
Community engagement activities are more than the collection of initial views of what matters to Australians; over the longer term, they will be characterised by efforts to have ANDI act as a catalyst for change and promote dialogue and sharing of wellbeing knowledge and best practices.
ANDI’s national progress measurement will be based on the goals and values identified by national consultation and research. It will address the 12 progress domains:
Society
- Children and young people
- Communities and regions
- Culture, recreation, and leisure
- Education and creativity
- Indigenous wellbeing
- Subjective wellbeing
Economy
- Economic life and prosperity
- Work and work life
Environment
- Environment and sustainability
Governance
- Democracy and governance
- Justice and fairness
ANDI aims to work closely with the ABS, and to support and complement the Measures of Australia’s Progress (MAP) project. Despite the MAP project was defunded a decade ago, this is an excellent framework as it provides a summary of progress measures informing on areas of life that Australians will tell us are important for national progress. The framework advances the cause of progress measurements and is at the vanguard of international progress measurement activity, including:
- A suite of indicators, or ‘dashboard’ approach, which presents selected informative progress indicators side by side
- An accounting approach, which provides a set of consistent accounts which may be used to support the production of a single progress indicator.
ANDI will be an evolving product. The consultation with Australians citizens will be built around the aspirations that citizens will tell us are important for them to progress as measuring progress is about determining whether we are moving in a positive direction towards those goals.
“Part of the objective of rethinking our measurement systems is to generate a national and global dialogue on what we care about, whether what we are striving for is achieving what we care about, and whether this is reflected in our metrics”
From Measuring Production to Measuring Well-being, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Presentation to the Productivity Commission, Melbourne, July 29, 2010