RURAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
E NABLING P ERFORMANCE M EASUREMENT IN B ASIN B OUNDARY C OMMUNITIES

PURPOSE
To measure the Basin-Boundary’s progress on economic development efforts using indicators.
Indicators are helpful for informing residents, organizations, and governments regarding key trends in
economic development, facilitating understanding of complex issues, evaluating the effectiveness of
various economic development measures, and motivating change.

GUIDING QUESTIONS
1. What economic development actions are currently being undertaken in Basin-Boundary
communities and how is progress being tracked?
Deliverables: Content analysis of economic development strategies/plans, inventory of existing
initiatives and indicators (including related methodologies)
2. What indicators are best positioned to measure economic development progress overtime,
what related data gaps exist, and what level of research support is required to address researchrelated capacity constraints?
Deliverables: State of Economic Development (SoED) in the Basin-Boundary indicator suite
developed, action plan for addressing identified data and support needs
3. Are Basin-Boundary communities making progress on their economic development efforts?
Deliverables: Complete SoED assessments for pilot communities (and other communities if the
project progresses beyond the pilot phase), individual community data sets and reports, regional
data sets and reports

KEY P ARTNERS AND ADVISORS
Pilot communities (to be identified)
Businesses
Columbia Basin-Boundary Economic Development Practitioners Network
Association of Kootenay Boundary Local Governments
Imagine Kootenay
Innovation Councils
Columbia Basin Trust
Chambers of Commerce
Destination Marketing Organizations and Kootenay Rockies
Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Citizen Services
Economic Development Association of BC, Economic Development Association of Canada

P ROJECT ACTIVITIES
Phase 1:
 Assemble project working group and confirm pilot communities
 Establish community-specific steering committees
 Develop the State of Economic Development indicator suite1 and identify data gaps
 Secure required data from provincial and national data providers as needed
 Implement local level data collection and consolidation strategies - Engage students or local
research assistants to provide direct, on site data collection and management support to pilot
communities as needed
 Implement pilots by collecting data, establishing data-management systems, analyzing data,
reporting on results and recording challenges experienced during the process
 Research and report on options for actions that could address areas of need as identified by
assessment results
 Share results of assessments with pilot communities
 Evaluate implementation process and assess feasibility of expanding implementation to additional
communities
 Based on results of evaluation, determine whether to continue with second phase of project
Phase 2:
 Using evaluation results, revise SoED suite to enhance potential for wide-scale uptake
 Develop guidance resources to support implementation and use of assessment results
 Promote availability and utility of SoED to Basin-Boundary communities
 Engage additional students / RAs to support implementation at Phase 2 communities
 Track project success metrics, including uptake of SoED suite, use of guidance materials, and impact
on action planning and implementation
 Contingent on completion of a sufficient number of assessments, complete a series of regional
reports focused on: 1) compiling results 2) documenting the experiences of a rural region in
measuring economic development and taking related action.

TIMELINE AND POSSIBLE FUNDERS
1 year to develop, pilot and evaluate the SoED suite and related methodologies. Depending on the
results of the initial phase, another 1-2 years could be spent refining the SoED suite and rolling out the
projects to individual communities as they express interest in participating, and documenting results at
the scale of the region. The approach would be similar to that used for the Business Retention and
Expansion project and the State of Climate Adaptation and Resilience in the Basin project. The Province
of BC ‘Rural Dividends’ funding stream funds efforts to diversify rural economies. The first intake is
expected in the Spring / Summer 2016.

1 While it is anticipated a standardized suite of indicators will be developed and implemented, additional

community-specific indicators may also be added to ensure local priorities are captured and measured