Mission

To improve community decision making using facilitation technologies that engage people in ways that promote understanding, strategic collaborations and the wise use of resources.

Purpose

To better align resources with organizations, people and place by utilizing the place-based knowledge of regional organizations to inform policy makers and stakeholders about local issues, assets and resources available to address their needs.

What is CIM?

Community Issues Management (CIM) is a web-based system designed for local and regional organizations to frame, manage and take action on complex issues. CIM can be employed as a tool for use within organizations and as a tool for community engagement to foster participation in transparent, data-informed and collaborative decision making. The foundation of this system is a process for framing issues through a wealth of Geographic Information System (GIS) data, and mapping and reporting tools custom built for organizations to better understand how issues impact people and place. Unique to CIM is a streamlined process to integrate and overlay local mapping data with state and national mapping data that resides in CIM’s Data Warehouse. Data can be organized around specific issues that CIM organizations or other user groups have identified.

At its core, CIM is built on a public good foundation to provide open access to public data for all communities across the United States.  Public Access Users can make maps, reports and search issue-specific content in the CIM library and explore how communities across the U.S. are using CIM to address pressing concerns. Organizations may join the CIM Collaborative as CIM Partner Organizations. Partner Organizations build on the public good foundation by using CIM’s robust Collaborative Management System capabilities to address complex issue in their regions.  Informed community decision-making is realized through the use of CIM’s unique tools and facilitation support. CIM provides a technology platform that helps tell sophisticated stories about key issues such as gaps and overlap in service provision, health inequities, childhood obesity, and workforce retention. Stories developed with CIM’s tools enable policy makers to better align resources with needs.

CIM Capabilities for CIM Partners

Each CIM Partner Organization has its own customizable web portal to effectively engage regional stakeholders and the public.  Partners can take advantage of these unique capabilities in one system. For more information about joining the collaborative as a CIM Partner contact info@cim-network.org.

A.  Content Management System

Issue notebooks: Issue Notebooks help organizations frame and manage the issues they have identified in their regions. An organization begins by creating a new Issue Notebook that can be edited or updated to track the development and progress made in addressing the issue.  Notebooks include the following tab sections: Overview, Maps, Reports, Documents, Multimedia, Other Resources, and Take Action (the amount of content generated, uploaded or hyperlinked varies depending on the issue).

CIM library: The library is a space for viewing Issue Notebooks. A user can search the library by CIM Partner to find out what issues are being addressed in a given region.  A user can also search by Keyword (e.g.  Health, Education, Childhood Obesity) to seek out information of interest.

Security: CIM Partner Organizations have great flexibility in assigning access roles to users and security levels for each Issue Notebook, map, report or other content that is uploaded or hyperlinked to CIM. Setting security levels for content enables organizations to work internally or engage the public around issues addressing their community.

B.  Data Integration

CIM Partner Organizations can build on the wealth of national data already available in CIM by dynamically integrating their local and regional data into the system.  All integrated data is assigned to user-defined security levels.  CIM Partners can: (1) Dynamically upload GIS data layers (Shapefiles) to add to the CIM mapping engine; (2) Dynamically upload tabular data (Excel, dBase or CSV) to create maps and add to mapping engine; and (3) Manually add points, lines and polygons using the “YouAdd” tool. These features are dynamically converted to GIS layers and added to the CIM mapping engine.

C.  Maps and Reports

Interactive maps: CIM’s Interactive mapping tool enables users to visualize and overlay 500+ national Source GIS data layers (e.g., socio-economic, demographic, health, education).  Additional local data is provided by CIM Partners.  Users can visualize data for their area of concern, and use Geographic Information System (GIS) tools to analyze and illuminate priority issues in their region. CIM Partners have additional functionality to dynamically add new data (points, lines and polygons) through an easy to use mapping interface and save mapping sessions to the Library for issues framing.

Dynamic reports: CIM’s reporting tool enables the public to generate dynamic reports about specific social, economic, demographic and health characteristics for predefined geographic areas such as counties, cities and zip codes. These reports contain maps, tables and charts, depicting the selected geography.  CIM Partner Organizations have additional functionality to generate dynamic reports comparing up to three areas with integrated local data and user-defined report areas.  Additionally, CIM Partner Organizations can save reports to the Library for issues framing.

D.  Collaborative Working Groups

Often community issues require the engagement/involvement of multiple organizations. A CIM Partner Organization can readily create secure Intranet Web Portals or “Collaborative Working Groups” where multiple organizations can work together, create Issue Notebooks, share data, ideas and perspectives around issues in a region. An advantage of creating separate Working Group portals is to prevent outside organizations from having access to the CIM Organization Portal where internal data or sensitive Issue Notebooks are located for organizational planning purposes.

For example, a CIM Partner Organization (e.g. a United Way) may engage other regional organizations (e.g. YMCA, local school districts, local government, public health, foundations and non-profit organizations) in a “Collaborative Working Group” around childhood obesity. Individuals from these organizations become Working Group Members, collaborating to address the childhood obesity epidemic. The secure Intranet portal enables these organizations to build trust relationships around data sharing and content exchange, and to co-create Issue notebooks that help the community get a broader, more grounded understanding of childhood obesity in their region.