The Dashboard of Sustainability is a free-of-charge, non-commercial software package configured to convey the complex relationships among economic, social, and environmental issues.
The software is designed to help developing countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals

Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals are eight international development goals that all 193 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015...

 and work towards sustainable development

Sustainable development

Sustainable development is a pattern of resource use, that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for generations to come...

. The software package was developed by members of the Consultative Group on Sustainable Development Indicators (CGSDI), and has been applied to quite a number of indicator sets, inter alia to the Millennium Development Goals

Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals are eight international development goals that all 193 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015...

 indicators and the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development

Commission on Sustainable Development

The United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development was established in December 1992 by General Assembly Resolution as a functional commission of the UN Economic and Social Council, implementing a recommendation in of Agenda 21, the landmark global agreement reached at the June 1992 United...

 indicators.

In 2002, Dashboard of Sustainability researchers Jochen Jesinghaus and Peter Hardi presented the Dashboard of Sustainability at the Johannesburg Summit

Earth Summit 2002

The World Summit on Sustainable Development, WSSD or Earth Summit 2002 took place in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 26 August to 4 September 2002. It was convened to discuss sustainable development by the United Nations. WSSD gathered a number of leaders from business and non-governmental...

 and the 2002 World Social Forum

World Social Forum

The World Social Forum is an annual meeting of civil society organizations, first held in Brazil, which offers a self-conscious effort to develop an alternative future through the championing of counter-hegemonic globalization...

 in Porto Alegre

Porto Alegre

Porto Alegre is the tenth most populous municipality in Brazil, with 1,409,939 inhabitants, and the centre of Brazil's fourth largest metropolitan area . It is also the capital city of the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. The city is the southernmost capital city of a Brazilian...

. It was also included in the resources for the OECD

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is an international economic organisation of 34 countries founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade...

 World Forum on Key Indicators.

In January 2006, the Millennium Project

Millennium Project

The Millennium Project is an independent international think tank with 40 "nodes" around the world that gathers and accesses information on futures studies that produces the annual State of the Future report since 1997 and the Futures Research Methodology series Versions 1-3.The Project was formed...

 utilized the Dashboard of Sustainability to conclude in their State of the Future

State of the Future

The State of the Future is an annual report published since 1996. Since 2009 it was published by The Millennium Project. It was published by the American Council of the United Nations University from 1997 to 2006 and in 2007 and 2008 under the auspices of the World Federation of United Nations...

report that global prospects for improving the overall health, wealth, and sustainability of humanity are improving, but slowly. In February 2006, it was proposed that the Dashboard of Sustainability be utilized to combine and represent two or more of the following five frameworks presently used for developing sustainability indicators: domain-based, goal-based, issue-based, sectoral, and causal frameworks.

Known applications (external links)

Translating a spreadsheet into a dashboard is relatively straightforward, see The Manual, and numerous indicator sets have been translated into the dashboard format. While many of them are not publicly available, the following applications have been put online by their authors.

Applications with global scope

Millennium Development Goals Indicators Dashboard - see screenshot to the right

Sustainable Development Indicators Dashboard (UN CSD set)

UNESCO/SCOPE Policy brief on Sustainable Development
Maternal and Neonatal Program Effort index (MNPI)

Applications with national scope

• Australia: National Land & Water Resources Audit, Sydney Regional Innovation Dashboard

• Azores regional dashboard

• Brazil: National multiannual plan (Plano Plurianual, PPA), Rural sustainability, Lages

• Greece regional dashboard

• India/West Bengal Monitoring of Public Health Progress

• Italy: Sicily waste management, agriculture indicators, Bienno, Bologna’s Ecological Footprint , Ecosistema Urbano, Padua, Liguria, Regional wellbeing indices, Varese PTCP

• Estonian National Strategy on Sustainable Development and Estonian regional dashboards

• Switzerland Regional Dashboard

• Tanzania Districts Dashboard

• Sustainable Development in the United States: An Experimental Set of Indicators

External links

• Dashboard of Sustainability: a free, non-commercial software which allows to present complex relationships between economic, social and environmental issues in a highly communicative format aimed at decision-makers and citizens interested in Sustainable Development.