AIM Framework glossary
Indicator
Canonical definition
An Indicator is what a population takes a system's state to be, carried in a published figure, an audited number or a measured outcome. That an Indicator is published or measured does not establish that it tracks the state it is taken to represent: the conditions under which an Indicator by which a governing body is assessed does so are those of the Admissible Indicator, and the failure class in which an Indicator recurs and responds while the represented quantities move beneath it is the Counterfeit Indicator.
Explanation
An indicator is any number a society reads as telling it how things stand: an unemployment rate, a waiting time, a confidence index. The number is not the situation. It is what people take the situation to be, which is why the framework asks separately which numbers deserve that trust.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Construct.