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Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Very good subject of great importance ... my grade of 3 results from my concern that some of the background to the matter of metrics is missing some important dimensions. for example GDP is a small part of a bigger system of metrics ... National Accounts which has not been adopted in many important nations because it cannot be gamed as the politicians (and bureaucrats) would like. I was also bothered by the rather sloppy use of the word investment when a more precise word would have been expenditure . I am connected to / following the New System Project ... my path crossed that of Gus Speth when he became the Administator of UNDP ... I was already advocating for better metrics back in the 1980s! The idea of Social Wealth Economic Indicators is excellent ... but in order to get traction any new system of metrics must be integrated into a bigger system of metrics that has an architecture that is both rigorous, flexible, and applicable to everything in the socio-enviro-economic system. I argue that effective metrics must be able to produce summary reports from the numbers, but also be able to drill down to a detail level ... and specifically to a PLACE, to a PERSON, to a PRODUCT, to PROCESSES so that better decisions can be made everywhere, not simply at a high level policy level which has little hope of ever being a successful instrument of the changes that are needed. Peter Burgess, peterbnyc@gmail.com truevaluemetrics.org