Government Planning &
Economic Development

Transform Quality of Life

What is Government Planning Analytics and Economic Development Analytics?

Big Data, Business Intelligence, and Advanced Analytics are not just business tools anymore. If you’re a government leader and not deploying and leveraging the immense power of analytics, you will risk devolving your state, county, and city and decreasing quality of life. Conversely, applying data-driven decision tools can assist government leaders and policy wonks in 19 vital areas: 1) Land Use; 2) Residential Real Estate; 3) Commercial Real Estate; 4) Economic Development; 5) Community Design; 6) Environmental Resources; 7) Parks, Open Space, Recreation; 8) Demographics; 9) Psychometrics; 10) Transportation & Mobility; 11) Employment; 12) Governance; 13) Education; 14) Safety & Crime; 15) Capital Markets & Community Re-Investment; 16) Technology 17) Energy; 18) Communication; and 19) Infrastructure & Services.

Why Do I Need Analytics for Government Planning and Economic Development?

Applying advanced analytics at the government level will empower every level and function of government to visualize every performance indicator affecting all four “customers” that a state, county, and/or city should serve: 1) current and future citizens/residents; 2) current and future employees; 3) current and future employers/collaborators; and 4) current and future visitors. Moreover, government leaders and decision makers will envision “four dimensions” for every performance metric they use to evaluate the decision they need to make: 1) historical trends; 2) current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; 3) what-if interactive forecasts; and 4) bullet-proof supportable benchmarks and milestones . . . in seconds. Armed with robust analytical dashboards, government leaders can visualize three powerful tiers of knowledge: 1) Executive Dashboards delivering a synthesized “composite” performance index for their state, county, and city on a single line chart; 2) All Performance Segments that measure, benchmark, and forecast every major function and department; 3) Thousands of market, economic, geo-political, demographic, and psychometric “drivers & indicators” to quickly drill down to the root causation and/or correlation of any issue, question, concern, project, or topic of discussion. And as regional and local governments become more competitive with their neighboring regional and local governments, it is vital to benchmark your state, county, and city by key cohorts: 1) Geographic Cohorts include cities surrounding, bordering, and/or close-by; 2) Competitive Cohorts include cities that compete for one or many resources on some level with your city; 3) Analogue Cohorts include cities that share several key characteristics with your city yet located well out of your competitive market area; 4) Emulative Cohorts include cities that “thought leaders and decision makers” benchmark for how they would like to evolve.

Why Choose Competitive Analytics to conduct Advanced Analytics for Government Planning and Economic Development?

Seneca, the Roman Stoic philosopher and statesman once said: “quam bene vivas referre non quantum | it is how well you live that matters, not how much.” Competitive Analytics designed and developed an unparalleled quality of life index and planning tool called DECIPHER™ SEQOL (acronym for Significantly Enhancing Quality Of Life) in order to help states, counties, and cities decipher their own performance, growth, sustainability, and competitiveness. This dynamic and multi-functional index is unlike any other in terms of accuracy and usefulness. It is both an index and planning tool. Other quality of life indices are typically based on a handful of static indicators at a specific point in time. Furthermore, there is typically very little visibility into methodology. In contrast, the SEQOL Index is an extremely precise and accurate measurement tool measuring thousands of drivers of quality of life falling within categories such as education, economy, crime, environment, innovation, etc. This allows government officials and decision-makers to drill down three levels – Level 1: A singular top-level score for the city, county or state; Level 2: Categorical rankings (e.g. Education, Crime and Safety, Economy, Environment, Innovation, Economic Development, Affordability, Technology, Demographics, and other categories); and Level 3: Each individual indicator that underlies the categorical and top-level score (e.g. SAT scores, misdemeanors, air quality metrics, etc). Moreover, government officials can use SEQOL as a strategic planning tool in that each department can drill down into the drivers that affect their area of responsibility for measurable performance benchmarking. Furthermore, SEQOL is a monitoring tool in that it tracks indicators over a period of time, allowing government officials to monitor the impact of their decisions over time. Finally, the SEQOL Index is interactive in that city officials are able to change certain aspects, components, and weights of the scoring methodology (e.g. the weighting of specific drivers). For example, with respect to city planning, DECIPHER™ SEQOL analyzes all specific categories of land use development along with economic and demographic indicators that correlate with these land use categories. These correlative indicators are then used to forecast demand/supply for residential housing (for-sale and apartment), retail, office, industrial, hotels, schools, transportation, etc. empowering local governments to make optimized decisions with respect to future land-use (based on forecast scenario models of residents, employees, employers, visitors, etc.). As an example, Competitive Analytics designed a comprehensive SEQOL index for City of Riverside, California.

See http://seizingourdestiny.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/2012-sod-qualityoflifeindex.pdf