Vital Signs Review

A great first step for any project is seeing what has gone before, and that is exactly what we did when we were contracted to create our first VItal Signs report for South West Victoria. We wanted to share our learnings with the broader community. Of course every region is different and every Vital Signs report will be different. Some community foundations create Vital Signs using their own staff, some use third parties, universities or other data analytics firms. \

As part of the South West (Victoria) Vital Signs project, Citizen Data has also processed open data for the whole of Australia so we are perfectly placed to help you with your needs.

14 15 Reports - what did we learn?

When you create a VItal Signs report for the first time, looking at what has gone before is a the perfect place to start. There have been 14 Vital Signs reports published in Australia in the last 5 years. We have reviewed each of these reports to distill out their common elements, what pillars are covered, what form does the report take, which KPIs, photos, charts, page count we've covered them all

All the current Vital Signs reports as PDFs are available from the Foundations Australia web site, (Select Vital Signs on that page), or use the links on our gallery which go to the host foundations page.

Demographics

All Vital Signs reports will show demographics of their region, often using a '100 People' visualisation.

Pillars

Every Vital Sings report is split into Pillars, the common ones are housing, health, education, economy

Millenium Development Goals

Relating your pillars and content to the millenium development goal highlights the how the challenges in your region are also important across the world.

What's missing?

Few reports have photos, maps or trend data

Local content isn't always highlighted

Very little gender based analysis - important for Mental Health and also education

Review Tables

Each report compared

Size, Population and Style

Pillars

Features (maps, charts etc)

References used - (MDG, contents, data sources)