Developing New Ways to Count Our Blessings
Dennis Trewin has been honoured with an award from The Bulletin in recognition of the work the ABS has undertaken to further the advancement of the nation.
Dennis topped the society category (one of ten categories) of The Bulletin's Smart 100 awards and was recognised for making a significant and positive contribution to Australian life. The award was for the ground breaking work undertaken by the ABS in producing the publication Measuring Australia's Progress (cat. no. 1370.0) (MAP). Dennis accepted the award at a ceremony at the Sydney Opera House on Tuesday 21 October, 2003.
The US General Accounting office has since embarked on a similar exercise using MAP as its model (Trewin addressed its first major workshop on the project in February). Other countries, including Sweden and Ireland, and the OECD, are also considering using the MAP model.
-The Bulletin
Future directions
The ABS is in the process of finalising the content of the next issue of the MAP publication. It was always the intention that MAP would evolve to take account of people’s feedback, new data sources and changing views of progress.
Some of the ideas we have adopted, or are considering, include:
- Renaming the publication Measures of Australia’s Progress
- Setting out a more explicit framework for our indicators of progress, and information on how MAP’s indicators link back to other frameworks
- Doing more to recognise and discuss the importance of governance, democracy and citizenship
- Considering both income and wealth when assessing economic disadvantage
- A new overarching environmental dimension entitled landscape, that looks at water, land, soil and biodiversity.
For further information about MAP, please contact Jon Hall by email jon.hall@abs.gov.au
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