The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and its partners create an "innovation resource" by using the nii to provide communities and their leaders access to information about public service innovations. This "Community IDEA Network" [CiNet] then ties these innovation resources to other infrastructure resources on policymaking (like CiNet's partner projects PRESIDENT and the Judiciary IDEA Net) to build a comprehensive resource for community decisionmakers. CiNet's Management Training Effort uses these innovation resources for developing a curriculum project training managers in community innovation and a research agenda pinpointing why innovations succeed in some settings and fail in others. The consortium's evaluation program then assesses the use of CiNet through an innovative survey technique.

Here is how CiNet works [see also a schematic schematic description of CiNet]: A community leader in Boone, NC faces a problem; the town council wants the town manager's office to formulate a plan for discontinuing recycling services because the town's revenue base has steadily declined. This problem presents the manager and council with a "no win" situation: either say "no" to town's residents or raise taxes on an already burdened revenue base, thus further undermining the town's revival. In an hour, a community leader can connect to Community IDEA Net. The community leader may (and may not) register with CiNet's "user inventory" (part of CiNet's "villager project") describing the general problem along with some basic information about the inquirer. The community leader can then search CiNet's innovation resource for project descriptions which have worked in other places with similar problems. The program descriptions describe a city's initial conditions and its goals, e.g., they might describe programs to further some city's recycling program, improve service, or simply reduce costs. For example, the town might relocate its collection bins to the town's schools where recycling becomes part of the physical science and social studies curriculums. The CiNet resource thus provides the community leader with ideas, basic descriptions, and evaluations with sufficient detail to make a preliminary presentation. CiNet also provides "contact information" for more detailed information. And finally, the CiNet inquiry links the community leader to other users (through CiNet's "community inventory") who have either asked similar questions, identified similar innovations, or come from the same geographic community.

The bulk of CiNet's activities will support identifying innovation resources preparing these materials for access. Taking innovation information and preparing it for access through the nii involves preparing two basic resources: the basic innovations resource and a "community inventory." For the innovations resource, the CiNet staff will identify basic information to help community leaders understand the problem(s) addressed, the policy innovation(s) adopted, and the extent to which the decisionmakers carried out any evaluations. Because the CiNet search engines use plain text descriptions, the innovation resource will access information for community leaders in terms more familiar to them. Even though the search process uses plain text, our experiences with the civic laboratory suggest that effective access often requires the addition of some "key words" associated with some kinds of descriptions. As a result, some staff work will focus on improving an innovation thesaurus of common terms to add to the basic descriptions. The innovations resource also includes verified contact information.

In addition, CiNet will develop a "community inventory" including two types of contextual information: descriptive information and a "villager access resource." The descriptive information will focus on census information about the jurisdiction involved in the innovation, including basic population data (race, wealth, education) and data on economic performance (e. g., employment, market activity). It will also include information on the institutional setting for the innovation including information on jurisdictions (e. g., part of a unified city/county government?), legal and political settings (e.g., divided state government), etc.. Gathering these data will allow for integrating CiNet into an ongoing research agenda focused on why innovations succeed and why they fail.

The "villager access resource" project will automatically track every inquiry and places it within two access "contexts:" First, it will link each inquiry with other similar inquiries drawn from a "user inventory." An inquiring community leader can use this inventory to connect to other community leaders facing similar problems. Every inquiry, then, has the potential to create a "village" of interests. Participation in the user inventory will be optional to protect privacy. Second, the villager access project will connect every inquiring community leader within a geographic area with other community leaders in that same area. A community leader, then, can identify other groups even though these groups may not, on their face, have common interests. The villager project allows, therefore, for every access inquiry to define lateral connections with a broader geographic community.

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