(PA) Prosperity Agenda- Assets and Opportunities Scorecard

Good business decisions and good policy decisions are data driven. Citizens in Brandon need a series of quantitative benchmarks that can track economic development and community well being. The Corporation for Enterprise Development (CfED) in the US has developed a national benchmarking system that attempts to evaluate business climate and capacity economic opportunity at the State level.

Brandon would benefit from this type of approach. The insights garnered from the date would help policymakers, the business community, practitioners, researchers, and external users such as business location recruiters and government funders build a stronger foundation for the future. Of course, we would need to modify the kind of data collected to meet our own needs, but scorecards like CfED's can provide a solid framework to build upon. Data could be gathered, analyzed, and disseminated on an annual basis.

Looking well beyond traditional GDP measures, the CfED scorecard looks at much broader indicators such as per capita income, job creation, business expansion, small-business start-ups, education, research, and infrastructure. It collects data on sixty-seven specific measures and rolls it up into three broad themes:

• Performance- including economic, quality of life, and environmental data;
• Business vitality- including business start-ups and closures, and industrial diversity;
• Development capacity- ranging from educational measures to infrastructure quality and investment.

This type of perspective emphasizes investment in infrastructure, education and training, attention to the needs of existing businesses in Brandon, support of new business formation, and innovation through increased access to capital, and improved technology transfer.

The Prosperity Agenda is a series of postings dealing with economic development in Brandon. I'd love to hear from you: shariformayor@gmail.com.