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Long-term Economic Development Planning

Background

Starting in 2021, Governor Dan McKee convened a series of community listening sessions and gathered input from Rhode Islanders to inform and strengthen the state’s RI2030 plan (rhodeisland2030.ri.gov). The first edition of the plan was released in 2021 and further updated in 2022 and 2025. This working document lays out a bold and holistic vision for the state over the next 5 years.

Since January 2023, Rhode Island Commerce and the Division of Statewide Planning have worked together to further develop the RI2030 vision and hone the implementation strategy for economic development for Rhode Island.

Ocean State Accelerates is the result of this work. With the approval of the US Economic Development Administration (EDA), it serves as the state’s Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) and with the adoption of the state’s Economic Development Planning Council, it is the Long-Term Economic Development Vision and Policy for Rhode Island. Our efforts in this process built off the work undertaken through RI2030 and aim to provide a detailed roadmap of how to reach the goals set forth in RI2030.

Ocean States Accelerates aligns with all EDA and state requirements in order to create one single plan that fulfills our federal and state obligations, furthers our efforts of reaching goals set out in RI2030 and is truly actionable.

Read Ocean State Accelerates
READ APPENDIX E: STATEWIDE DIAGNOSTIC

Process

To develop Ocean State Accelerates, RI Commerce and the Division of Statewide Planning convened a 27-member Economic Development Steering Committee; hosted a dozen formal focus groups; received feedback through another score of small-group conversations; and hosted 1:1 interviews with over forty Rhode Islanders, representing industry, business support, workforce development, the arts, housing, climate resilience, nonprofits, youth supports and more. The team also reviewed over twenty recent reports and state plans to build off recent analytics and to align this effort to others relevant to economic development. Hundreds of Rhode Island voices and hundreds of pages of strategy and data analysis built from those Rhode Islanders were incorporated into the process of creating a draft for public comment. Then, between September 20 and October 20, 2023, the draft version of Ocean State Accelerates was available for Rhode Islanders to read, evaluate and submit feedback on. Dozens of people reached out and engaged with the plan to provide feedback, which the team used to help update the final version of the document. The final version of the plan, which was adopted by the Economic Development Planning Council on November 15, 2023, was approved by the EDA in December 2023.

Measuring Success

In order to track Rhode Island’s progress in achieving the goals and objectives set forth in Ocean State Accelerates, we have established metrics for each priority objective. Selected metrics can be viewed in the PowerBI dashboard below, which is updated regularly as new data becomes available.

 

 

Get Involved

Following approval of the plan comes the most important step: implementation. If you see yourself or your organization reflected in the plan and want to get involved to put it into motion, we want to hear from you. If you have ideas for metrics to track or ways to measure the success of the plan, we want to hear from you. For any questions, comments or feedback that you may have, please submit them via email toinfo@commerceri.com.

Thank you so much for your time and feedback. While we may not be able to respond individually to all who provide feedback, please know that we will be diligent in reviewing your thoughts.