The process of developing a baseline profile of the Thamarrurr regional population involved a large number of agencies and individuals from Wadeye itself, and from Territory and Commonwealth agencies. Regional data for a customised area such as Thamarrurr are not readily available; they need to be requested, even cajoled, from a variety of sources and then locally interpreted. Aside from ABS census data, other indicators to do with welfare, income, housing, employment, education, health, crime, and even demography, have to be constructed with assistance from line agencies.

Thus, an early test of the partnership arrangement in the context of developing the baseline profile was the extent to which Commonwealth, Territory, and local community agencies could, and did, deliver on access to relevant data to support the construction of social indicators. In the Thamarrurr exercise, an important first step in accessing these data was the bringing together of all relevant Commonwealth and Territory agencies to a common meeting to discuss and negotiate the means by which this would occur. Although much can be promised at such gatherings, the speed of response can be variable and considerable follow up is necessary. As seen from the data list, administrative and public domain information is largely restricted to aggregate region-level data.

The emphasis in the Thamarrurr Agreement on evidence-based outcomes underlines the need for accurate demographic data. Whatever the detail of regional plans, it is crucial that these are based on reliable estimates of the population they are intended for. Globally, this requires reliable totals. Program-wise, it requires reliable breakdown into infants, mothers, school age children, youth, young adults, middle-aged, and older people. Culture-wise, it requires social mapping into groups that have local significance such as age grades, family groups and clans.

In Thamarrurr, the basis for an accurate count of the population was established by the Regional Council itself, working with the various groups established within the Thamarrurr governance structure to address priority issues. Of particular note here were the Thamarrurr Regional Housing Authority, and the Palngun Wurnangat Womens Association. This process alone was an exercise in capacity building for governance as it involved key local people in collecting and verifying their own population data to be used for their own purposes.

The outcome is a database that enables the Regional Council to consider options and needs for the future. With this information, the Council now knows that just to achieve a very modest goal and keep the regional employment rate at its current very low level (14%), the number of adults in work will need to double over the next 20 years. Also, with the school age population rising to well over 1000 within a generation, there is a strong case for upgrading the school to secondary status. As for health issues, the fact that older age groups are likely to increase fastest over the next 20 years has substantial implications for health spending and provision of facilities in the region, given the age profile and nature of morbidity. Finally, in planning to address housing needs, substantial additional resourcing is going to be needed just to sustain the current regional occupancy rate at 16 persons per functional dwelling, let alone reduce it.

For effective planning it is essential that the information system constructed to inform regional governance should be ongoing, constantly updated, and expanded where necessary. Aside from the ability to establish region-wide needs, the database developed for Thamarrurr can be further developed by configuring it into family/clan groups, while additional information such as housing, jobs, and education can also be grafted on to suit the needs of the various ICCP priority working groups. Accordingly, this task should be seen as a core function within the regional governance structure. Indeed, it could be argued that one measure of success in terms of establishing good governance, is that regional councils, such as Thamarrurr, begin to assume responsibility for the compilation of their own indicators (in partnership with government agencies who often hold the necessary data), and to progress in stages to their interpretation, presentation, replication, and dissemination with the ultimate goal of their application for planning. What is presented in the current profile is akin to the rapid appraisal approach to social and economic profiling with associated shortcomings as described by Birckhead (1999). For the next phase in the development of regional information systems, more appropriate models should involve enhanced community participation and various approaches to this exist (Howitt 1993; Josif & Associates 1995a, 1995b, 1995c; Walsh & Mitchell 2002).

In particular, agencies faced with imperfect data for development planning have moved to establish demographic surveillance systems at various sites across the developing world (Binka et al. 1999; IDRC 2002). These now provide an internationally recognised set of tools, methods, procedures and guidelines for the successful tracking of regional population dynamics and measurement of intervention impacts that would bear useful replication in the Thamarrurr context.

As with many aspects of Indigenous life, information gathering and interpretation tends to be presently done for communities by outsiders. With appropriate resourcing, training and skills development for local personnel, the ICCP trials represent a unique opportunity to build internal regional capacity for planning within the framework of associated emerging governance structures. This sense of ownership and participation in the planning process, and the information flow that informs it, is central to good governance and community development.