Community IDEA-Net Demonstration Summary A demonstration project of the UNC Leadership Information Archives, the Community IDEA-Net (CINet) disseminates ideas about making governments more effective. It also attempts to develop systematic data on what works and why. CINet works like this: Say, the city manager of Wilmington, NC faces a problem; the city council wants the manager's office to formulate a plan for providing city services despite the fact that the city's revenue base has been steadily declining. This problem seems to present the manager and the council with a "no win" situation: either the council says "no" to the aspirations of its residents or it raises taxes on an already burdened revenue base, thus further undermining the city's revenue potential. In an hour's session, the manager can log onto the INTERNET and get access to the Community IDEA-Net. Here the city manager can utilize sophisticated services to search through the IDEA-Net's electronic "reference room" for project descriptions which have worked in other cities (either in North Carolina or nationwide). These program descriptions describe a city's initial conditions and its goals. They describe in reasonable detail the kinds of programs that worked under these circumstances to further the city's tax base, improve services, and otherwise break the no win downward spiral. The descriptions provide the manager with ideas, basic descriptions and evaluations with sufficient detail to make a preliminary presentation to the council. Then the descriptions provide "contact information" to facilitate more detailed information from the original source. For more information about CINet, contact Terry Sullivan at sullivan@SUNSite.UNC.EDU.