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Nebraska Horizons

Nebraska Horizons

Nebraska Horizons is an environmental scanning process designed to provide communities, leaders and developers in rural Nebraska with strategic intelligence about the future.

A project of the Rural Initiative, Nebraska Horizons involved a statewide network of scanners looking at information about events, issues and relationships from a wide variety of sources and analyzing the information for trends and impacts. The pilot project, which took place from May through September 2006, involved 13 scanners and resulted in dozens of scans in these areas:

  • Agriculture: Crop and livestock production, value-added agriculture, specialty crops, market access and development, sustainable agriculture

  • Capacity Building: New models of leadership and service delivery, social entrepreneurship, social capital, leadership development

  • Economic Development: Small business; business entrepreneurship; job creation and retention; wealth creation, retention and transfer; employment and labor; population growth and retention; housing

  • Education: Pre-Kindergarten - high school, postsecondary education, adult and continuing education and training, distance learning

  • Health and Health Care: Recruitment and retention of professionals, access and delivery, cost, quality, mental health, training for health professions

  • Infrastructure: Streets, roads, highways, curbs and gutters, bridges, buildings, water and wastewater systems, utilities, internet access

  • Law Enforcement and Justice: Access to legal services; prisons, jails and detention centers; community-based solutions; policing; alternative sentencing

  • Natural Resources and Environment: Water, ecosystems, energy, conservation, weather, land use

  • Quality of Life: Parks and recreation, arts and culture, spiritual and religious life, entertainment, information exchange/communication, safety, access to child and elder care.

Nebraska Horizons

Participants in the pilot project saw as much value in the process as in the product. The scanners interacted electronically through email, and face-to-face both in person and by videoconference. Focusing on the future helped the group transcend differences in perspective and interest. They recommended the Rural Initiative help communities and regions conduct scanning projects on their own.