Economic Development Recovery and Resiliency Playbook - Flipbook - Page 19
Be Strategic: Clearly Defne
Your Economic Goals, Before
and After a Disaster
Ch.2
As stated in Chapter 1, given that local governments do not have unlimited
resources, it is important to be intentional and strategic with your economic
development eforts. Goal setting is critical to an economic development
strategy so everyone participating in the process has the same vision of what
success looks like, along with the metrics to benchmark progress. The U.S.
Economic Development Administration (EDA) provides a helpful Compre
hensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) framework that highlights
the importance of goals to a community’s economic resilience and how goal
setting fits into an economic development strategy.
Goals Within a Strategy
Key CEDS elements include:
• Summary background;
• SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat) analysis;
• Strategic direction/action plan;
• Evaluation framework; and
• Economic resilience.
The summary background should provide an overview of the region’s
economic situation. Building on data from the summary background, the
SWOT analysis should assess the state of the regional economy, including
the opportunities and threats posed by internal and external trends and
forces, and the availability of resources for economic development. The
region’s vision, goals, and measurable objectives, together with an appraisal
of the region’s competitive advantages, should form the basis of the strategic
direction and action plan. The evaluation framework should establish criteria
and performance measures for evaluating the region’s implementation of the
strategic direction and progress toward goals and measurable objectives.
The economic resilience component should address planning for and
implementing resilience, establishing information networks, pre-disaster
recovery planning, and measuring resilience. The elements of the CEDS, seen
through a lens of economic resiliency, should logically build upon and/or
shape each other to result in a coherent, targeted document.8
8
See https://eda.gov/ceds/content
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