The Council of Australian Governments released the National Early Childhood Development Strategy, Investing in the Early Years in July 2009 (COAG 2009). One of the key reform priorities in the strategy is to build better information and a solid evidence base, and establishing national outcome measures for early childhood development has been identified as one of the key projects to progress this. Developing an indicator-based reporting framework for early childhood development will enable monitoring of achievements against the Early Childhood Development (ECD) Outcomes Framework to inform the Council of Australian Governments of progress towards the vision that "by 2020 all children have the best start in life to create a better future for themselves and for the nation". This information paper outlines the process of developing an indicator-based reporting framework for early childhood development, and establishes a recommended high-level set of indicators to measure progress against the outcomes framework in the strategy. Appended are: (1) Ecological model; (2) Overview of early childhood development frameworks; (3) Literature review summaries; (4) Children's Headline Indicators; (5) Summary of use of conceptual models; and (6) Workshop participants. (Contains 11 tables and 8 figures.)