Welcome to a new DCYF blog series from the Office of Innovation, Alignment and Accountability (OIAA). Though our team is still fairly new (staff came aboard in January) we’ve been hard at work learning, listening and piecing together the complex puzzle that will be the mission work of DCYF. To keep everyone informed and engaged through this process, we’ll post regular stories to the DCYF blog and look forward to your feedback on what we’re discovering and exploring.
The legislation creating DCYF, HB 1661, provides us with a vision for a robust and sophisticated use of data in the new agency to help improve outcomes for children, youth and families. Data can help us do this by identifying needs, driving innovation, improving organizational performance and supporting more efficient, effective and transparent use of public resources.
Among the data-related efforts of OIAA, we are identifying overarching child outcome goals that will guide the new agency and producing a baseline organizational performance assessment of key metrics across all our lines of business. We are also combining efforts of research, analytics and data in the three agencies of origin (Department of Early Learning and Department of Social and Health Services’ Children’s Administration and Rehabilitation Administration) to build a single, integrated team at DCYF. We expect to reorganize current functions to form this new unit as well as coordinating with state agency partners, research institutions, tribes and community partners in this endeavor.
Research and Analytics Toolbox
To be a data-informed agency, we’ll need to build a robust research and analytics toolbox. We need to have the right information available; it needs to be clear and put into the correct context; and we need logical methods of putting lessons from this data into practice. And, critically, we need to guarantee that any data we use is examined with a racial equity lens. In doing this, we will connect the dots between problem identification, evidence-informed solutions and rigorous evaluation of results.
Some of the items we’ll be putting in our toolbox include:
- Research and assessment — These can help describe the shape of the challenges at a population level — state, local and for subpopulations (such as specific racial/ethnic/language groups, rural residents, etc.). This includes answering descriptive questions about who, what, where and when our greatest challenges exist as well as causal questions about how and why.
- Analytics and reporting — These tools support ongoing program monitoring and performance improvement, helping us to implement evidence-informed solutions. Here we monitor and report on organizational and program process indicators that are thought to be essential for achieving goals. Regular data feedback cycles powered by analytics and reporting provide up-to-date data to identify areas needing attention so leaders and staff can make adjustments and investments as needed.
- Program evaluation — With this we can determine the effectiveness of evidence-informed programs and interventions. We expect this will occur in collaboration with other state agencies and in partnership with implementing entities. HB 1661 tasks DCYF with regular reports on the results of program evaluation and other program data to the public.
- Analytic framework — This tool helps link program and organizational performance to overarching child outcome goals. Along with benefit-cost analyses[1], the analytic framework helps agency leadership identify opportunities to create more pathways to success for the children, youth and families we serve.
- Outcome performance reporting — Regular reporting of progress toward overarching child outcome goals as well as reporting on organizational and contractor performance supports our commitment to transparency.
Building a robust structure sufficient to support the uses of data and research envisioned for the new agency is a large and complex assignment. The new agency will require an integrated data warehouse to realize more powerful use of data; however, currently we have siloed legacy data systems that are not yet integrated. Other challenges include outdated technology, long cycles for data matching across state agencies and agency staff who are already stretched to meet daily requirements of their jobs. One of the important tasks of OIAA is to come up with creative and effective proposals for how to overcome these challenges.
Bright Spots
In addition to identifying the current capacities of the three research-data units, we are identifying other places in the three agencies where data are already being used for the purposes described in HB 1661 and where existing good efforts need more support.
For example, the Children’s Administration recently launched its first version of an automated service matching tool. This new product provides information to social workers in the field about contracted, evidence-based programs available in the local area that would appropriately meet identified needs of families and children with an open Children’s Administration case. The tool is just a start and is an example of excellent work with data being done in the three agencies that can be leveraged for success, provided caseworkers receive sufficient support.
Many other bright spots can be built upon — good things are happening with research and data that can be leveraged and supported for greater impact. These include knowledgeable and skilled research and data staff, solid quality assurance functions and a track record of reputable reporting and data publication across the three agencies. In addition, each of the three agencies have established research relationships with external and university-based researchers who are experts in their respective fields.
Partnerships
Clearly the new agency cannot accomplish the vision for this more robust use of data to improve outcomes for our state’s children, youth and families in a vacuum. We will soon be reaching out to state agency partners, other collaborators in the state’s research community and our partners in the implementation of services. Our task will be to think together about child outcome goals, baseline organizational performance measures and other research- and data-related components of the new department. We look forward to working with these partners as well as leaders and staff from the three agencies to help us build a robust research and data function to support the agency’s relentless focus on improving outcomes for children, youth and families.
Keep an eye on this space in the coming months for more updates from the OIAA team.
[1] DCYF anticipates making use of benefit-cost analyses regularly produced by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy.