Talk:Dashboard of Sustainability

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Regarding all below matters, I redirected Dashboard of Sustainability to HERE and expanded that article to include info on the Dashboard of Sustainability. -- Jreferee 06:37, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Jreferee and NehWyn! I saw the new page, and think the merge with digital dashboards might work, but there remains a lot to do. For example, there is a difference between business dashboards and those used for assessing the performance of nations. I didn't know that "the Retailer's Bakery Association in Laurel, Maryland, United States considered the Dashboard of Sustainability when evaluating its twenty five affiliate groups for leadership, administrative structure, membership involvement, and member services". But I know pretty well that the U.S. government considered the dashboard for judging U.S. politics, see here... maybe I should work on a list of current uses. Anyway, thanks a lot to you two for cheering me up. Jj2006 17:47, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Please do. As long as you provide reliable sources, that would be interesting, and may even regain the Dashboard its own separate page. --Nehwyn 18:36, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

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Contents 1 Copyright issue 1.1 Issue 2 Business vs government performance 3 Original research

[edit] Copyright issue

Some phrases in the Wiki page have indeed been copied from this Word doc here. That shouldn't be a problem, since I am the author. Since it's a Word doc, that can easily be verified: open the db_leafl.doc, and check the properties in MS Word: Jochen Jesinghaus alias jj2006.
Apologies for not having fully understood all Wiki policies. I'll try to learn and improve.
Re Conflict of interest: Yes I am one of the authors of the Dashboard. But I am not promoting a controversial or commercial product. The Dashboard is an absolutely free resource put at the disposal of people who
- want to understand facts & figures about the World
- have own indicator projects and are looking for tools to realise them (e.g. the Maternal and Neonatal Program Effort index)
Re controversial: The dashboard itself is not controversial, since it just takes indicator sets that are publicly available, and displays them in a format (e.g. colour-coded maps as shown here) that is easier to understand than Excel spreadsheets. That explains why it is popular.
However, in the indicator community, there is an ongoing dispute whether aggregation of indicators to indices is a good thing to do. About half of the expert community say we shouldn't do that, the other half say it's ok and useful. Indeed, the news are full of mediocre aggregation exercises - most of them are utterly intransparent. The dashboard doesn't force anybody to aggregate, but it can aggregate apples and oranges quite easily, and in a very transparent way.
Regarding neutrality, you may find links to the dashboard both from OECD and, on the opposite end of the political spectrum, from the World Social Forum...
So one last question: Why should the dashboard appear in Wiki?
Imagine that you are interested in Sustainable Development, or in the Millennium Development Goals. The MDGs are the policy framework for making the World a better place. They are not just hot air: There are indeed facts & figures on the MDGs freely available on the web.
Please go to the United Nations site, and spend one hour trying to understand the figures you find there. Afterwards, do the same with the MDG Dashboard - i.e., go there, and spend one hour looking at the figures (or even better, download and install the tool - but there is a learning curve). If afterwards you still consider that the Dashboard is a tool for promoting its authors, we'll be happy to delete it immediately from Wiki. (Jj2006 17:58, 11 November 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Issue

There is not, at the moment, an issue regarding whether the content should be on Wikipedia other than a copyright issue. Unfortunately, the solution you suggested is not acceptable as there are two issues:

1. You could have placed another person's name in the Word document's properties
2. You might not be that person.

You should do one of the following:

• Make a note on the original website that re-use is permitted under the GFDL and state at Talk:Dashboard of Sustainability where we can find that note; or
• Send an e-mail from an address ending in jrc.it to permissions(at)wikimedia(dot)org or a postal message to the Wikimedia Foundation permitting re-use under the GFDL, and note that you have done so on Talk:Dashboard of Sustainability.

When, and only when, you have done this, you can go back and reinstate the content. Stifle (talk) 17:46, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Stifle: *Send an e-mail from an address ending in jrc.it to permissions(at)wikimedia(dot)org or a postal message to the Wikimedia Foundation permitting re-use under the GFDL

Done! Jj2006 17:58, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Is it possible to replace the document found online with a new version explicitly stating the information is released under the GFDL or public domain? -- ReyBrujo 18:01, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Business vs government performance

Thanks to Jreferee and NehWyn for helping me out. The merge between "Dashboard of Sustainability" (DoS) and digital dashboards might work, but there remains a lot to do. For example, there is a difference between business dashboards and those used for assessing the performance of nations. The text as it stands is very much focused on business applications. They exist, but are rarely accessible - that might explain why the graphs are taken from the DoS, and contain maps comparing nations. I have googled a lot but never seen a concrete published example of a business dashboard. Enterprises tend to be pretty secret about their internal performance.

We also need to tidy up a little bit. I didn't know that "the Retailer's Bakery Association in Laurel, Maryland, United States considered the Dashboard of Sustainability when evaluating its twenty five affiliate groups for leadership, administrative structure, membership involvement, and member services". But I know pretty well that the U.S. government considered the dashboard for judging U.S. policies, see here... maybe I should work on a list of current uses. Anyway, thanks a lot to you two for cheering up a frustated newcomer ;-) . Jj2006 18:09, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Original research

I want to point out that, even if the document is considered free, the content may be considered original research. Note that, while data recollection if sourced is not original research, analyzing and making conclusions about it can be considered so. It is better to reference as many sources as possible to prevent misunderstandings. -- ReyBrujo 18:05, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi ReyBrujo, I have added "The information contained in this document is herewith released into the public domain" in the properties of the Word doc. The new version is online; however, I cannot convince Mozilla to download the latest version of this Word doc - I get the cached one. Re "analyzing and making conclusions": The Dashboard shows the indicators in a colour coded format rather than as columns in a spreadsheet. That in itself can hardly be considered as "analysis" or "making conclusions". But I warmly invite you to make the test as suggested above: Go to the original UN data. If you understand something, I'll pay you a beer. Cheers, Jj2006 18:17, 11 November 2006 (UTC) (very close to giving up with Wiki)