The Polis Center focuses primarily on one aspect of community informatics, called community information systems (CIS). CIS integrates data and information about communities, provides them in easy to understand formats, and makes them accessible to communities through the Internet.

The goal of a CIS is to make data accessible to community organizations, residents, government, and researchers and build their capacity to use it to improve decision-making, policy, research, and ultimately the quality of life in the community through data-informed decisions. For example, an organization that provides youth programs could use a CIS to answer these types of questions:

• Where is our target audience? The organization could map the participants of its current programs and view those points on a map showing where all children 5-18 live along with socio-economic variables to match the type of audience they are trying to reach.
   
• Where are areas with greatest need for after-school programs? The organization could view a map of areas with low incomes, high juvenile crimes, and single parent families, along with existing after-school programs. It could ask the CIS to give it a list all of the neighborhoods or census tracts meeting specified criteria.
   
• Where could a program be housed? The organization can map the schools, churches, and other community assets to find potential partners in the geographic area of interest.
   

We have 14 years of experience developing community information systems, including the development of one of the nation’s largest community information systems, SAVI, designed to improve decision-making in Central Indiana communities. SAVI provides over 100,000 indicators on the socio-economic conditions, health, economy, housing, and many other aspects of the community and makes them available for 11 types of geographic areas, such as census tracts, neighborhoods, and school corporations. We developed SAVI in partnership with United Way of Central Indiana as community trustee to support human services planning needs. The system now is being used by a variety of other sectors for community development, public health research, education, program planning, and more. See Areas of Expertise to learn more about how Polis collaborates and works in these areas.