The Canadian Standards Association, CSA, chairs the ISO<sup>13</sup> 9000 and 14000 through the Technical Committee TC 207. Development of an international standard of city indicators would likely benefit from the close support of TC 207. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities, FCM, has extensive experience with development of city indicators (see Annex 3). Since 1996 FCM has conducted ‘Quality of Life Reporting Systems’ (QOLRS) for twenty Canadian communities (greater than 50 percent of the country’s population). Much of the data is from Census of Canada. Currently 72 indicators are collected from 12 sources (see Annex 3).

Other Canadian city indicator programs include: (i) Environment Canada’s Sustainable Communities Program which is an Internet-based guide; (ii) the Pembina Institute’s sustainability indicators program, especially as it relates to the City of Calgary, (iii) the Greater Vancouver Regional District’s long term sustainability indicators; (iv) Statistics Canada’s work on trends and conditions in Canadian communities and comprehensive database; (v) the Municipal Chief Administrative Officer’s Benchmarking Program in Ontario; (vi) the Province of Ontario’s mandatory municipal ‘report card’ program, and (vii) current national discussions on allocation of a gasoline tax based on municipal performance.

## **4.4 City Indicators in Belo Horizonte, São Paulo, Bogotá, Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal**

Annex 5 provides a summary of city indicator initiatives in six pilot cities: Belo Horizonte, Sao Paulo, Bogotá, Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. These six cities are expected to be the first pilot communities to develop and test proposed city indicators under the work plan. City indicator work usually includes participation from the municipality, local academic institutions, the private sector, higher levels of government, and international agencies.

Generally all cities in the world have existing city indicators of one type or another. Reviewing progress in the aforementioned six cities will highlight the similarities and differences that are likely to be found across other cities.

# **5. Looking for Robust City Indicators**

## **5.1 Construction Cycle Process**

Considerable information on the methodology to construct good indicators is available, and there is now an informal consensus on the set of characteristics that an indicator should satisfy. All indicators share a common construction cycle process that consists of three steps: (1) collection of raw data, (2) construction of statistics, and (3) creation of indicators from the statistics. The quality of the indicator depends crucially on how “efficiently” each of these stages is performed.

- **Raw data:** The collection of raw data requires a city-level representative sampling, or the availability of “weights” that enables extrapolation. The data should be collected in a systematic way to be comparable over time and across cities.

- **Statistics:** Sometimes, statistics can be used directly as indicators, but in most cases they are just part of the process of indicator construction. For example, statistics such as the mean education level of the unemployed population might give a good sense of the skill level of the individuals who are looking for jobs, and could then be used to guide the policies that may be relevant for this situation. However, when and where the composition of the labor force changes over time, this measure is no longer a good indicator.

> 13 ISO – International Standards Association – see Annex 8

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