November 2013 - Parks & Recreation - 61

NRPA Update
The New PRORAGIS
By Travis Smith

or almost any activity, whether work or play, people are interested in
how what they're doing compares to others. If we're playing a sport, we
keep score to see who's playing better. We try to keep our yard looking
nicer than the family who lives across the street. We want to know how the
schools our children attend rank compared to others in the area. And, as a park
and recreation professional, you very likely would want to know how your
programs and facilities compare to other agencies across the country or in your
region. This is exactly what PRORAGIS™ is designed to help you do.

The newly launched update to
PRORAGIS provides dramatic improvements in both usability and
function, but it is still based on the
idea that the power to compare your
agency to similar entities across the
country is a valuable tool for improving how you manage your parks and
programs. PRORAGIS allows the
user to find comparable agencies using fully customizable search tools,
and then analyze their operating
data against either a specific agency, group of agencies or all agencies
in the system. The completely redesigned geographic information system (GIS) interface offers PRORAGIS users even more powerful tools
to visualize, study and improve their

parks and facilities.
While the specific
improvements are
too numerous to
discuss here, the
On-Demand Data
Reports and the
Census Layer GIS
functions deserve
special attention.
On-Demand
Data Reports: The
new On-Demand
Data Reports function of PRORAGIS
quickly and easily gives users some
of the most commonly used operating information from the database.
Users can choose from more than 20
options, and with one click they can
see the means, medians and/or quartiles from all agencies in the database.
For instance, if the user was interested in learning the operating expenditures per full-time employee for 2011
from all agencies in PRORAGIS,
a few quick clicks from the On-Demand Data Reports menu would
show that the median expenditure
per full-time employee from the more
than 200 respondents was $95,851.
While this information is available
using the standard reporting function
of PRORAGIS, On-Demand Data

Reports provides this and other popular benchmarking metrics in a faster
and more concise manner.
GIS Census Layers: One of the
many exciting new GIS features allows PRORAGIS users to integrate
the massive amount of social and
economic data available through the
Census with their park, facility and
program information. This allows
the user to visualize their parks and
facilities on a map, then overlay customizable information to see how
the population around their parks is
changing in size and composition at a
Census-block level. Rather than having to rely on anecdotal information,
or city-, county- or state-level analyses
of changes in population, PRORAGIS users much more closely examine
this data and plan their programs and
improvements accordingly. For instance, by using the Census layer that
displays the percentage of the population 5 years or younger, park and recreation professionals can accurately
target programs and improvements to
areas where they will be most used.
To summarize, the new PRORAGIS is just like the park and recreation
programs and facilities that our members manage - it's constantly evolving to address your needs. These improvements, along with many others
already in place or coming soon, offer
you the opportunity to compare your
agency to others, find opportunities
for improvement and subsequently
better serve your citizens. Don't you
want to know how you compare?
Travis Smith is NRPA's Director of Research
(tsmith@nrpa.org).

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November 2013 - Parks & Recreation

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