I was looking to see which other city in BC has conducted such a survey. I found traces of one on Surrey’s web page. I say traces because there are two reasonable and short reports done in 2009. There are no entrails I can find of any project or program implementation so that one could follow this up some 6 years later to see whether the report made a difference.

Trouble is with many such social reports, one might see a difference, either negative or positive, but one typically has problems attributing it to the programs/projects implemented.

I thought I would be led to some attempt at following through by clicking on a link to “reports to Council”. Wishful thinking. Wouldn’t you know it, it connected me with a 404 error.

There is an opportunity to respond. Here is what I wrote. I am interested to see whether I will get a response at all.

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I hit a 404 error when clicking the link to “reports to Council” at the bottom of the following web page

surrey.ca/community/3191.aspx

I have read the two reports linked. I am looking for some indications of what, if anything, has actually been implemented.

I find that it is all too common that a report is prepared which looks reasonable but is never provided with an agreed-to group of objectives which are measurable by selected indicators, a baseline survey, and implementation actions, programs and projects which are developed, followed through with appropriate progress monitoring by re-measuring the indicators.

I was hoping that reports to council might enlighten the interested audience of one or more people.

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I do not have much faith that PG will do much better.

I would love to see a list of all the reports this City has done over just the past decade, how much they cost, and which ones got any value out of the money spent. In other words, if we spent $50,000, and another $50,000 to implement the main recommendations, did we have a cost avoidance of greater than $100,000 as a result of the report and its implementation. Even more so, do we continue to benefit from the report and actually start saving money?

That is what a quality control auditor should be able to do for us. I cannot see anyone else at city hall at this time capable of doing such work. We just spend, feel good, and put the reports on the shelves with no accountability by anyone.