John G. Craig Jr.'s theory is that the only way for Pittsburghers to figure out where we are going is to first learn where we are.

With that in mind, Mr. Craig, the retired editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and head of the nonprofit Riverlife Task Force, believes benchmarking is the way to go.

Benchmarking is the term he used to describe where Pittsburgh stands when compared with other cities. By doing that, he said, the region can get a clearer picture of where it is and what its problems truly are.

"Until you know where you are, you really can't be very intelligent about it," he said.

Mr. Craig and Paul O'Neill, the former U.S. Treasury secretary, came together to create the nonprofit Pittsburgh Regional Indicators Initiative. They presented their new Web site, www.PittsburghTODAY.org, to the meeting of the Pittsburgh Technology Council yesterday. On the site they compare Pittsburgh with the rest of the country, and with comparable cities.

The cities used for comparison purposes were Baltimore; Boston; Charlotte, N.C.; Cincinnati; Cleveland; Denver; Detroit; Indianapolis; Kansas City, Mo.; Milwaukee; Minneapolis; Philadelphia; and Richmond, Va.

Those benchmark survey results, or as much information as the group has, are now available on the PittsburghTODAY site. The Pittsburgh Regional Indicators Initiative includes 22 counties surrounding Pittsburgh as part of the economic region, including areas of Ohio and West Virginia.

"They go to Pirate games, they buy the Post-Gazette, they go to PNC bank, they do this in this region," Mr. Craig said about people who live across state lines but consider themselves Pittsburghers.

"This is not a finished piece of work; this is a work in progress," Mr. O'Neill said about the data-gathering project. Some categories of information are still empty, but Mr. Craig said people could inform their conversations about the region with the information that already is on the site.

"It is an attempt to characterize where we are in this region," Mr. O'Neill said.

Mr. Craig said the data have some surprises, because while government may be a problem, it's not because it is too big. He said of all the benchmark cities, Pittsburgh is the only one that has seen a decline in government jobs in the past decade.

The region spends less local money on police and fire protection than other comparable areas. It spends the second-lowest amount on parks and the third-lowest amount of local money on roads and bridges.

The local taxes in the Pittsburgh region are the sixth-lowest per person of the benchmark cities.

Yet the interest on debt for local governments is the highest per person of any of the regions.

Mr. Craig also presented statistics that show that child poverty is very high in the region, and that it is not a city problem. The Pittsburgh region had higher rates of child poverty than the comparison regions and, locally, the city had a lower rate of children in poverty than some of the outlying counties such as Fayette and Indiana, and counties across state lines, such as Monroe County, Ohio, and Monongalia County, W.Va.

"This is something we have to think about and recognize it's a drag," he said.

Mr. Craig asked the members of the technology council to put aside their feelings as they listened to the report on the data.

"These are the facts," he said. "We carry around an emotional load about these things."

Once the initiative finishes the work on where Pittsburgh is in the various categories, it can be an indicator for government and other interested parties to come up with solutions to problems and money to fund those solutions.