These are excerpts from the Dashboard online help file. This file was last updated on 12/02/01 19:14. It is highly recommended to use the detailed manual - press Shift F1 while the Dashboard software is running.

** Toolbar functions *

Basics
The Dashboard presents indicators in an easy-to-understand format.
Type any keyword, e.g. "icon", you are looking for in the edit box right of the "Exit" box. If your search has more than one result, press tab to reach the list box with these results-
Anarchy!
AnarchoSoft © allows you from now on (V 2.5 of Feb 12, 2001) to design your own indicator set!
First, and only in case they are active/black: switch off Distribution (D), Scatterplot (S) and Linkage Analysis by clicking into the respective toolbar icons.
Now go to the next help items.
Design your own set
- Click into an indicator - the mouse cursor will become a box with a BIG question mark inside;
- Move the cursor between two other indicators and click again.
Right-click to cancel the operation.
Weight your set
Move the mouse near the inner circle; the mouse cursor will become a plus-minus sign.
Left-click to increase the weight of an indicator, right-click to decrease it.
Hold Control and left-click to obtain a smooth distribution of weights; the first and last quarter of the set will be the basis for smoothing.
Hold Control and Shift and left-click somewhere on the inner circle: a box will ask you if you want to apply equal weights.
Favourites
No red hearts, sorry! But your anarchical, eh, individual indicator sets can actually be stored.
Right-click somewhere above the dials: the favourites box will appear; choose your favourite, and... ->Anarchy
My own notes
Note that, although you can edit this help file, it will be MERCILESS overwritten with each new version! You will not be warned!!
However, you can hold Control while clicking into the question mark to launch your own notes with the same interface.
Adding a new record is somewhat clumsy but feasible
- clear the small find box
- click on "new" in the listbox
- click again in the find box
- add a title behind the $ sign
- click into the main edit field and write
- save changes on exit
Three problems: ******
Please note that the CGSDI Dashboard is a *** TEST *** version!
There are three problems to solve...
(click on P1 to P3)
P1: Selection
The indicator selection is "hand-made" by the CGSDI, with two main criteria
1. Data availability (otherwise we would have had to invent them - not a good idea)
2. Closeness to the Sustainable Development structure as defined by Agenda 21 (but we do not yet have the institutional cluster).
Ideally, the indicators should be chosen through a democratic process involving societal actors of many countries (this may happen in the future, if the necessary resources are made available by a generous sponsor...).
P2: Weighting
The current version attaches equal weight to each indicator, and this is in obvious contrast to political reality - "life expectancy" is probably more important than "regulatory burden". Ideally, we would like to establish weighting coefficients through surveys among experts and/or ordinary citizens. So take the current "all issues are equally important" with care, but remember that (see P1 above) NOT including an indicator means giving it a weight of zero. Or, in other words, the current focus on GDP as the lead indicator excludes most of our indicators from the agenda of decision-makers. Accordingly, the policy distortion is much more serious than the one incurred by, for example, giving 7% to "Regulatory burden" instead of a "politically correct" 5.2%...
P3: Data flaws
While GDP, inflation etc. are old and well-established indicators, many of the indicators in our test set are experimental, new, untested, private initiatives, in short: less reliable. Ideally, we would like to attach an "error bar" to each of them, or at least a "quality label" like the one in Eurostat's TEPI publication; but most of our sources do not supply such information. Therefore: be aware that the data quality might differ, and use the Distribution function to check whether the message given corresponds roughly with your expectations...
Question mark
Launch this help dialog
Plus sign
Under the question mark: Open the find & country box to find specific countries and/or indicators. Example: Fra/Ita+Habitat
In the upper right corner, a list box with country subsets will appear. Select a subset, and right click into the indicators.
Trouble
Sometimes graphic elements appear in wrong places, or are missing. Often a click into the "Flowers" (toggling 2- and 3-panel view) resolves the problem.
Please report ANY problems you might have - this kind of feedback is essential!!
Aggregation
The colours in the middle of the Dashboard circles are obtained by averaging the colours of the indicators of the respective theme.
Values are linearly interpolated between the worst (0 points) and the best country (1000 points). In some cases, this leads to very uneven distributions - try inflation or sub-soil assets, and see "smoothing" for more detail.
Weighting
Currently, all indicators within a theme are given equal weight, and the three themes have a weight of 33% within the Policy Performance Index (PPI).
Weights will be introduced in future, if somebody volunteers to organise a survey with a sufficient sample of 1. experts (for assigning weights inside the themes) and 2. ordinary citizens (for assigning weights for Env, Eco, Soc).
The sample has to be international, and will only be valid if there is no North-American bias; furthermore, the sample composition must be transparent, and based on some kind of democratic process.
Colour codes
Standard is a seven-colour scale (see "Adjust settings" to change this to 3, 5 or 9).
Dark red means: in the sample of countries, this is one of the worst.
Yellow means average performance.
Dark green means: in the sample of countries, this is one of the best.
(note that "Green" does NOT imply that this country is "sustainable" - only certain geniuses are able to calculate the overall sustainability of a country)
Valuation
See colour codes.
Hold CONTROL and click into the recycling icon to toggle relative and absolute valuation.
"Relative" means that performance is judged relative to the one expected for the given per capita GDP of the respective country. For example, Switzerland gets a lot of red indicators, because Swiss citizens expect high performance from their wealthy country.
Note that the U.S. score "better" for CO2 damages under relative valuation - rich countries are expected to have higher emissions...
Combo box
Above the ISIS icon: Select a country
(ignore the first lines - this is supposed to become "favourites", but the function is not yet operational)
ISIS icon
Hold Shift and click here to launch your browser an go to the JRC ISIS web site
Env,Eco,Soc,O
Above the dashboard panels, this icons activate the panel below, and select the theme. The "circle" icon presents the overall PPI.
Adjust settings
Hold Control and click on the disk icon in the toolbar. Notepad (hopefully present on your PC) will open the document "CG_PARAS.TXT" and display this text file. Play with the values, and save (you don't have to close). The Dashboard will immediately react to the new settings.
The following options yield useful results

Tips & Tricks
For distribution and scatter plots:
Hold Cont when left-clicking into an indicator to toggle between 3-digit and full country names
Right-clicking in an indicator toggles between full country list and a subset (e.g. EU, OECD, DC) that you can define by opening the find box (click the "+" sign under the help question mark).
Keyboard
Page up/down: select next/previous favourite
Only in the Distribution (D) view:
Cursor up/down: select next/previous record (country, city, company...)
Cursor left/right: select next/previous indicator ()
** Toolbar icons
The toolbar has eight icons; they are preliminary and may change.
Functions are accessed by a single left mouse click.
A few additional functions can be chosen by pressing Control while clicking.
Disk
->Save settings
Save the current settings (country selected, 2- or 3-circle dashboard, distribution, scatterplot, news, ...)
CONTROL: starts Notepad for adjusting certain other settings
"Balance"
->Synchronise by country
"Flowers"
->Show Dashboard
Switch between 2- and 3-circle Dashboard.
Green arrow
Exchange first and second panel (rather useless function - a place-holder for future more important ones).
Pin
Set this indicator as X-axis in scatterplots (see also linkage analysis)
Recycing symbol
->Linkage analysis
"D" icon
->Distribution
"S" icon
->Scatterplots
Street lights
->"News service"
** Toolbar functions
Save settings
Click here to save the adjustments you made to the indicators (i.e. valuation and smoothing); this will also save the current settings, e.g indicator & link indicator choice, countries in left & right panels. [CONTROL: edit parameters]
Synchronise by country
dark=all panels show the same country when clicking in scrollbar, white=compare countries (set country individually for active=green panel)
Show Dashboard
Switch between two-panel display and full dashboard (only in 2-panel mode: Hold Cont and right-click into an indicator to see data as text)
Swap panels
Exchange countries and indicator sets for first & second panel
Set indicator for linkage analysis
Use the current indicator as the X-axis in scatterplots. You can choose an indicator from all three data sets (Nat, Eco, Soc). CONTROL: set relative valuation basis (may on rare occasions crash the tool, so save your Excel, Word, ... docs before playing with this!).
Linkage analysis
Click into an indicator box in the left panel to calculate the best correlations for each indicator.
Show distribution
Show the distribution of point values for the active indicator. Points for single indicators range from 0...1000; the global index is calculated as the average of all indicator points and is therefore usually between 200...800 points (Cont+right mouse key: see data).
Scatterplot
Show the current indicator and its linkages to a basis indicator (see 'set indicator'); click in indicator legend to toggle between normal (yellow) and logarithmic (blue) X- axis.
News service
Double-click into the headline to read the full story on the Internet
(ATTENTION: this is an April fish - it looks real, but is rather "virtual"... click into "More" and "Update" for a test of this wonderful feature!)
Scrollbar
click here to move up & down the country list (sorted by per capita GDP)
Open/close 'find' box
<Country1/Country2 +Indicator> (Example: Japan/Fra+CO2). Select country groups in the listbox on the right (right mousekey: toggle full/subset in Distribution+Scatterplot).
The subsets (EU, OECD, DC, Africa, ...) are defined in cg_group.txt; you may have to restart the dashboard if you want to create own sets. Make sure you have a second copy, because my installation software is very unkind to such files...
Valuation & smoothing
In case of extreme outliers, you can 'smooth' the distribution by transforming the extreme ends of the distribution to an ordinal scale.
Select an indicator, hold CONTROL and click in the "street light" icon, then into the scrollbar. Try 'sub-soil assets' or 'inflation rate'.
Synergies
A green regression line indicates that there is a high positive correlation between the societal goals portrayed by the respective indicators (example: life expectancy and education). Although this does not necessarily mean that there is a causal relationship, it is often a starting point for identifying a more complex model of the interaction between the two goals.
Conflicts
A red regression line indicates that it is apparently difficult to achieve "green" levels simultaneously for both indicators (example: life expectancy and CO2 emissions).
Using other data sets
Check in the main directory (usually c:\db_circs\) which *.ind files are present, and drag them over db_circs.exe
Creating own dashboards is slightly more complicated - please press F4 from a running dashboard to see the template in Excel