Federal agencies, local government, the private sector, community groups, and foundations should develop and support a series of working sessions to build local capacity for sustainable community development. These working sessions would bring together community leaders and key agencies to build local capacity for decision making and collaboration by (1) ensuring access to good information, (2) providing a range of technical assistance, (3) helping communities acquire analytical tools, and (4) training local individuals and organizations on best practices. Such working sessions could also provide a mechanism for regional collaboration. As originally proposed by the National Academy of Public Administration, such workshops could lay the foundations for a permanent forum between regions and the many different federal agencies that have an interest in regional problem-solving. Working sessions could be tied to existing outreach programs at universities or newly created, like HUD's Community Builders Fellows program; these could be sponsored by regional, statewide, or community foundations.

The Interagency Working Group on Sustainable Development Indicators, working with human service providers and community-based indicator projects, should develop indicators that can better measure social capital and local capacity. There are several measures of social capital. One is the type and frequency of interactions within and outside the community. Examples are inventories of civic associations that provide information on members including numbers and characteristics such as age, gender, race, and disabilities. Such inventories can show frequency of meetings, decision-making processes, finances, and services provided to members and nonmembers. Another measurement is the impact of various types of social capital on the ability to reach sustainable development goals. This effort should, at a minimum, examine each of these measures of social capital.