Development of a credible long-term plan that has a chance of being implemented generally requires that key players in the community who control both public and private resources be involved, as well as citizens who can articulate community needs, concerns, and priorities. Community collaboration is strong in many of the public and private efforts we have cited here. V. The education initiative alone has attracted cash and in-kind contributions of millions of dollars from many Silicon Valley corporations, as well as the participation of many educators and parents. In the Silicon Valley, corporations that compete famously with each other in business have seen the need to collaborate to assure the sustainability of the region. The County Chair of Multnomah County has made a public point of using the Portland-Multnomah Benchmarks and the Multnomah County Benchmarks to stimulate collaborations to improve conditions in the region.
Successful collaborations require that the collaborators trust each other.
Communities that work at building successful collaborations across organizations and sectors are simultaneously working at building community trust. If citizens are asked to participate in public decision processes, and if they are to be provided with performance information and expected to make intelligent use of it, it helps if they are provided with contextual knowledge and some level of training or technical assistance to help them participate wisely and effectively. The experience of the communities that have involved citizens in identifying priority issues and developing goals and performance indicators confirms that citizens can participate intelligently in these processes without having the years of technical knowledge and expertise that can be expected of service managers. However, the more deeply citizens are involved in these processes, the more important it is to help them develop their capacity to understand issues, work with performance data, and make good choices. Whether or not formal training is provided, there should be some opportunities for citizen learning.