In the fall 2024 issue of The Canadian Institute of Planners‘ Plan Canada, you’ll find an article covering the intersection of sustainability, data, planning, and the SDGs submitted by our own Barb Besner and Hillary Rosentreter. With permission, we share the article below to highlight Peg’s links to city planning actions around the world.
WHAT IS PEG?
As planners, how do we know if the work we are doing is making a difference? Peg (mypeg.ca) is a community data dashboard that grew out of a desire to more deeply understand the impact of charitable investments in our community, and has become a project seeking to democratize data for all and inspire action to improve the well-being of all Winnipeggers.
Built through a city-wide engagement process, Peg strives to provide accessible data within two clicks, tracking over 60 indicators of well-being grouped around seven themes: basic needs, the built environment, economy, education & learning, health, the natural environment, and governance & social vitality. Many of the indicators are disaggregated to the neighbourhood level, allowing for comparison and understanding of a specific community’s strengths or struggles. Peg data is provided through relationships with trusted local partners, including municipal and provincial governments, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, and many more.
In addition to a free and user-friendly website, Peg shares indicator data through media reports, presentations to community, business, and government, and social media. Regular thematic reports are produced to shine a spotlight on particular aspects of the data, as well as to support quantitative reporting with stories from community members and organizations working on the frontlines to create change.
Peg was designed for community members and decision-makers from every sector to learn the facts about our city. While the site is designed to benefit all Winnipeggers, particular groups who may benefit include: government and other decision-makers (to inform policy and processes), business owners (to explore connections to their corporate social responsibility plans and plan investment strategies), students and researchers (to research projects and take action in the community), non-profit organizations (to gather information, inform proposals and tailor programming to their community’s needs), and members of the public (to learn more about their neighbourhood and their city).
WINNIPEG’S FIRST VOLUNTARY LOCAL REVIEW
Peg was designed not only to track data, but to inspire action. Fortunately, the data on the platform has found many ways to jump off the page and into the public and political spheres. Although Peg started as a suite of indicators to track progress locally in Winnipeg, it evolved in a way that brought a more global flavour to the platform; aligning indicators with the relevant targets of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda.
The Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development (OECD) has stated that an estimated 65% of the 169 targets under the 17 SDGs cannot be achieved without the engagement of subnational levels, including municipal governments. In 2021, Peg fully embraced the alignment with the SDGs and completed Winnipeg’s first Voluntary Local Review (VLR), one of the first of its kind in Canada. A VLR is a local version of a key element in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda – the Voluntary National Review. Canada has completed two VNRs, the most recent published in 2023.
A VLR is distinct from other typical reports, as the data is aligned with the targets and goals of the global framework, allowing for best practices to be shared with hundreds of other communities around the world. This allows for not only comparison, but also the opportunity to share a wealth of knowledge and perspectives and learn about how local communities are achieving their sustainable development goals.
Building off the existing collection of data on Peg to develop Winnipeg’s first VLR provided a unique opportunity; while most VLRs are completed at the municipal government level, Winnipeg’s takes an arm’s length approach, using Peg indicators as a foundation. Peg indicators were supplemented by a policy review of federal, provincial, and municipal policies associated with each relevant SDG, and interviews with key civil society organizations working on the ground to get a clear sense of the challenges of making progress in Winnipeg. An important benefit of this approach is that the VLR process and the report itself exist outside of the municipal political cycle, positioning it to endure transitions and point to a longstanding, community-informed dataset.
PLANNING APPLICATIONS
From the beginning, Peg was intended to be a tool for local policy makers to move the needle on important issues. Over the years, the site’s strong local partnerships, deep ties to the community, and connection to the SDGs has enabled Peg data to be used widely in Winnipeg to inform a variety of municipal policy endeavors.
For example, former Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman cited Peg as an inspiration to orient the City of Winnipeg’s 25-year development strategy, OurWinnipeg 2045, according to the SDG framework. As part of OurWinnipeg 2045’s implementation, Council developed its first Strategic Priorities Action Plan (SPAP), a list of prioritized actions necessary to deliver on their document’s four-year policy commitments. The SPAP uses Peg’s suite of indicators as a baseline, citing Peg’s extensive multi-sectoral engagement process and alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals.3 The SPAP includes 14 community impact key performance indicators, 11 of which align directly with Peg, while the remainder are slight variations. Progress of the key performance indicators will be made available to the public through an online dashboard on the City of Winnipeg webpage. Integrating Peg indicators into a central municipal planning policy has provided a springboard to engage all stakeholders to track progress toward the SDGs.
A case study of Winnipeg’s experience with OurWinnipeg 2045 was included in the UN Habitat SDG Cities Canada Report 2024, highlighting both why the City felt it was important to align with the SDGs, and why tracking using local data was important:
“OurWinnipeg 2045 is a development plan bylaw that is required for all municipalities by the government of Manitoba. However, it is broader in scope than a classic land use development strategy. Upon reflection of the success of the 2011 OurWinnipeg Plan, it was determined that more clarity and resources were needed to effectively measure progress and the outcomes quantitatively. For the 2045 plan, the City searched for a larger framework with embedded principles and better-defined goals, and staff connected with various community groups, culminating in agreement that the UN SDGs represented a reliable and useful starting point…The City believes that by aspiring to achieve the internationally recognized Sustainable Development Goals and developing its action plan on community-based solutions, coordinated partnerships, and responsive service delivery that it will empower itself as a thriving, sustainable, and resilient city.”
Winnipeg’s Climate Action Plan and Poverty Reduction Strategy have also flagged Peg as a key strategy to track progress and enable reporting. At a time when the municipal funding landscape is challenging due to lingering effects of the pandemic and other economic pressures, Peg’s position as a reliable source of up-to-date community data is a valuable asset when considering the potential efficiencies in reporting across government and civil society organizations. In addition, being at an arm’s length from the City makes it possible for Peg to enable political dialogue and civic engagement to integrate community level data into inclusive planning processes.
BEYOND WINNIPEG
Using the SDG framework gives Peg a common language to learn from other cities around the world. For example, the City of Kitchener has taken the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals to heart and used it to guide policy to
improve social wellbeing, environmental sustainability, as well as the economic stability of the local economy. To spur further innovation on local action for the SDGs, the city has developed an SDG Idea Factory5 as a place for businesses, organizations, and community members to develop solutions to some of our most challenging municipal problems.
In Brisbane, Australia, the municipal government used their VLR to map alignment of the SDG framework to twelve different development plans for the city, looking at how each can contribute to achieving the goals. These plans range from corporate and business, to arts, to transportation, and more.6 Aligning these plans with the SDGs supports an important understanding of the interconnected and intrinsically linked nature of all challenges faced by a city. The SDGs must be addressed and achieved holistically, without silos, and cities can use it as an interdisciplinary framework to take action.
While Winnipeg’s first VLR was a step forward towards meaningful change, it also revealed where there is more work to be done. This includes the continuous revision of Peg’s suite of indicators to ensure we are reflecting our community’s needs as they change over time, expanding our processes for participation and inclusion, and encouraging cross-jurisdictional collaboration across federal, provincial, and municipal governments as well as the non-profit sector.
Barb Besner RPP, MCIP, is Senior Manager, Research & Governance at United Way Winnipeg. Her work focuses on non-profit governance and community development research & policy, including community indicator systems and reporting. Barb can be reached at [email protected].
Hillary Rosentreter is a Policy Advisor on the Tracking Progress Team with the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). Her work focuses on the community indicator system Peg and the successful implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals at the local level. Hillary can be reached at [email protected].