Dashboard voor de sociale economie

‘As an administrator I’d want to adapt the definitions of what you see as profit and loss for the city.'chair National Client Advisory Board

A comprehensive instrument for monitoring, measuring and shaping the well-being and value of the city.

These are the results of dozens of conversations, discussions and exchanges of Cities for Change. Door uiteenlopende deelnemers en organisaties uit Amsterdam en andere steden in Europa.

Transition

The social economy needs a new comprehensive instrument – for making, measuring, monitoring and steering policy choices and political decisions. This economy comprises a broad package of what provides us with value and well-being. Climate protection, security, money being retained in our neighbourhoods, social justice, (informal) care, decent housing, clean air, an adequate standard of living including essential services, conservation of nature… And only resorting to the growth of the gross domestic product to assess this is far too one-sided.

The new instrument is a dashboard: naturally including data measuring how things are going, plus a methodology or assessment framework. The latter offers policymakers and politicians insight into the indicators of value and well-being, how these interconnect and into the possible ‘trade-offs’: positive or negative impacts of a policy in one domain on policy in another domain.

‘An index with only one figure can’t tell you anything about how we’re doing in terms of well-being. That needs a wide range of indicators.’Hebe Verrest, well-being economics researcher at the Univeristy of Amsterdam

Recommendations

Cities develop a dashboard for the social economy: a comprehensive instrument which measures and monitors value and well-being, including a methodology (assessment framework) which enables policymakers and administrators to make adjustments. With new definitions of profit and loss, investments and costs. Value and well-being are broadly defined and interconnected: money, employment, local entrepreneurship, security, equality, cooperation, education, health, nature, quality of life, social networks. This so-called multiple value creation is layered and complex. It requires an instrument which analyses the interconnections between all of these aspects, as the basis for political choices and policies.
Citizens play an active role: their perspective on well-being is incorporated in this instrument and they are co-owners. They have access to the dashboard so that they gain insight into their local economy. The data are (also) collected locally and in a participative manner.
Within the municipality of Amsterdam, for example, there are many indices and monitoring instruments being used. These show that there is a need for a more comprehensive instrument. All these different indices and monitors do provide a broader insight, but continue to pertain to sub-areas: for example, there is one for employment, another for sustainability, infrastructure, mobility or food strategy.

‘An index with only one figure can’t tell you anything about how we’re doing in terms of well-being. That needs a wide range of indicators.’Hebe Verrest, well-being economics researcher at the Univeristy of Amsterdam

Which problems are the recommendations an answer to?

We are still used to an economy of money, markets and growth. That money must be made in the city is not up for debate. But it has become clear that an economy that is one-sidedly focused on the growth of money – the gross domestic product – is completely outmoded. Countries with substantial economic inequality and ecological damage can boast a large GDP. Because the fossil industry counts as a positive, but the billions of hours in unpaid care work do not, and the same goes for whether people are healthy or whether nature is flourishing.

Other instruments and methods are better equipped to account for these things. And after decades of (international) research and social and political debate, the consensus is growing to start using different, more comprehensive methods. That are effective for policy choices and political choices aimed at the well-being of people and planet.

What is already happening in Amsterdam or other cities?

The Broad Well-being Monitor, the Donut city portrait or the dashboard for the well-being economy: alternative methods already exist. And across the world, there is an increasing number of similar initiatives, aimed at turning economic systems into welfare economies. Countries like New Zealand and Scotland have welfare budgets that provide an insight into how economic policy affects areas such as security and public health. Also, New Zealand, Scotland, Wales, Finland and Iceland have been collaborating for years in a Wellbeing Economy Governments partnership (WEGo).