Section 5 Interviews with Communities Who Have a Data Hub

5.1 Community Summaries

5.1.1 Ready, Ready Integrated Data System

Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready, Ready) launched in 2014 and received investments from Blue Meridian and Duke Endowment in 2017. A feasibility study to build an integrated data system was conducted in 2017 and 2018. The identified purpose of the system was to improve coordination of services, through mechanisms such as sharing case management data to help with continuity of care, as well as evaluation, learning how to improve services.

Ready, Ready is currently working closely with Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy at the University of Pennsylvania on developing a governance structure. Additionally, they are in process of finalizing their MOUs. The project is managed by Ready, Ready, but being implemented by IBM and Coastal Cloud. The scope of the project is to start small with four partners (prenatal to three services). One thing they are keeping an eye on is the developments with the resource and referral platforms being utilized across the state (NC Care 360 and Aunt Bertha) to make sure what they build is coordinated with that work. Some of the lessons learned include the following:

the work is an iterative process,
It’s important to have the end goal in mind at the beginning,
relationships and technology required take a lot of time,
keep the families at the center and engage them in the process,
because it takes lots of time for stakeholders it is helpful to compensate them for their time,
bring organizations in as thought partners to build buy in, and
when there are national offices involved, it is helpful to have them engaged in the process so they don’t stymie progress.

Their immediate next steps are to have a broad and blanket consent developed, which they think can be implemented because HIPAA’s intent is to enable more coordination.

5.1.2 Broward County

The Broward County Data Collaborative came about from a federal grant received in 2014. The project is managed by Children’s Services Council of Broward County, an independent taxing authority, and there is a Governance Board over the Data Collaborative that consists of the CEOs of the participating institutions. Currently there are three primary players: school system, Department of Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare, and Sheriff’s Office. Their purpose to date has been to use the data for research and evaluation, but the future goal is to use the data for care coordination. The work was funded initially by a P3 federal grant and additional funds have come from Children’s Services Council and a small grant to do community-based participatory research. Below is a summary of some of the lessons learned from the Data Collaborative:

It is important to be thinking about data justice and that communities are not further harmed by data infrastructure,
visuals of the structure and process are helpful,
patience, persistence, and trust are key,
getting legal support is critical,
engaging people at the state level, particularly with early childhood education is important,

Their next steps are partnering with a technology group Ventura and Amazon Web Services to build out a more sophisticated integrated system.

5.1.3 Miami-Dade IDEAS Consortium for Children

This group started in 2014 with a federal grant from the Institute of Education Sciences. The stakeholders involved include: University of Miami, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, The Early Learning Coalition of Miami-Dade/Monroe Counties, The Children’s Trust, and the Miami-Dade County Community Action Agency and Human Services Head Start/Early Head Start Program. The current backbone of the work is the University of Miami. The purpose of this group’s work is to improve services and practices. They are in the process of getting all the data sharing agreements in place. The primary lesson learned from this group is to make sure you are bringing people along and have it be a collaborative process - this helps build buy-in and trust. They are actively working to secure the resources to conduct the work over multiple years.

5.1.4 Allegheny County

Allegheny County has developed an integrated data system that they have been working on for over 20 years. This work started with the school system and Department of Human Services and is managed by the Department of Human Services. The funding initially came from local foundations and operations are now coming from the County with additional dollars from local foundations for improvements. The purpose has been for evaluation, to understand and improve services, improve case management and care coordination, and community planning. Along the way, the group has found all types of productive uses of having the data on hand, many of which were unforeseen. Some of the lessons learned include:

the importance of having a champion from the start,
there is a need to be in it for the long haul, both with resources and commitment, and
developing an integrated data system is an iterative process.

5.2 Detailed Summaries

5.2.1 Ready, Ready Integrated Data System

5.2.1.1 Big Picture

5.2.1.1.1 Origin story

Ready for School, Ready for Life launched in 2014-15 and was the brainchild of local funders who saw the need to do things differently in Guilford County, NC. Prior investments in early childhood focused interventions yielded positive outcomes for families, yet those differences did not translate at the population level. As a result, the local funders convened a range of stakeholders, including families, the faith community, and those representing social services, other non-profit providers, business, philanthropy, health and education to look at the system that children and families experience. To deepen their understanding, the funders and stakeholders interviewed a representative sample of almost 250 families with children five years old and under in Guilford County to learn about their experiences, prenatally and in the early childhood years and find out what families knew, when they knew it, what they didn’t know, what they needed, and what needs were being met. Additionally, they interviewed over 100 providers in Guilford County. In the end, there was considerable consistency in terms of what families and providers shared. The data collected was themed and eventually distilled into six priorities employing work groups. From the start, leveraging technology to improve coordination and for learning was a clear priority.

In 2017, Ready, Ready, started conversations with the Duke Endowment and, ultimately, received an investment from both the Duke Endowment and Blue Meridian Partners. The proposal Ready, Ready prepared for Blue Meridian partners included building an integrated data system (IDS). To further understand, Ready, Ready conducted a feasibility study in 2017-18 with the help of a researcher from Duke University that included on-the-spot interviews with families outside of shopping centers as well as conversations with stakeholders. All in all, the vision for an IDS came from the local community and was endorsed by knowledgeable and supportive funders.

5.2.1.1.2 Scope and purpose

According to C. Dobson, Director of Navigation, The Ready, Ready IDS is being designed to look at “both sides of the coin” for families with children prenatally through five years old, and potentially beyond, in Guilford County. One aim of the IDS is to integrate administrative data that is linked in an anonymized way to enable learning about the target population as a whole. This way Ready, Ready uses de-identified data to see that children who have particular experiences have particular kinds of outcomes. Second, Ready, Ready will leverage their integrated data system to improve the service experience of families and children in a very personal way. So, Ready, Ready is working to link the documentation systems of different providers so that participating providers can coordinate in a more integrated and streamlined way to improve each family’s service experience. As a result, Ready, Ready avoids asking families to repeat their potentially traumatic stories. Ideally, families will feel like “the left hand knows what the right hand is doing” at all times and each family’s experience will feel coordinated while moving across various service providers. Ready, Ready’s IDS is aimed at accomplishing data integration at the population level and at the level where families navigate among service providers working to assist in meeting their unique needs. To that end, consultants assisting Ready, Ready often return to the idea of a minimum viable product over and over again. The routine question at Ready, Ready is, “for this goal, what is the minimum viable product?” Ready, Ready begins with the minimum viable product and builds additional enhancements as they go. So, while Ready, Ready intends to broaden the reach of the integrated data system, the focus is on the four core partners most engaged with families prenatally through age three for now.

5.2.1.1.3 Where things stand

For the last year, IBM has partnered with Ready, Ready to provide guidance and direction on the governance structure. Prior to this work, Ready, Ready participated in training provided by University of Pennsylvania’s Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy (AISP) around creating a governance structure among other steps related to building an IDS. In January, 2022, Ready, Ready will kick off the Ready Ready IDS Governance Structure which includes a tiered process and comprises an Executive Council, a Governance Council and a Governance Office made up of technical and programmatic representatives. The Governance Office is the bottom layer of the tiered framework and consists of a team of two consultants from IBM and Coastal Cloud, the Ready, Ready representatives and, in some cases, community partners who have been involved in conversations around data sharing for the last several years. As an example of the tiered structure, the Governance Office will draft a data sharing agreement or policy for which the Governance Council provided the clear purpose and guidance. Ultimately, the Executive Council approves all agreements and policies. Initially, the Ready, Ready Governance Structure will focus on navigation services as Ready, Ready is looking to build the infrastructure that begins prenatally and continues at least up until age five. The aim is for navigation to provide the opportunity to connect with families, approximately annually, to do a comprehensive assessment of child and family strengths and needs, as well as to connect families to resources, supports or information in the community that may benefit them. An accompanying idea is that Ready, Ready wants to eliminate unnecessary layers for families who are already overextended with different providers who are connected with them. Ready, Ready’s most significant partners in Guilford County will design this navigation infrastructure and then work together on delivering it. At this time, data is being shared manually on a monthly basis using Excel spreadsheets as the platform is being designed to facilitate an electronic transfer of information.

5.2.1.2 Particulars

5.2.1.2.1 Host

The notion of IDS ownership has evolved over time in Guilford County. Early on Ready, Ready and United Way of Guilford County (UWGG) explored the possibility of building a Guilford County IDS that would include any initiative meeting established standards and agreements. At the time, United Way of Greater Greensboro (UWGG) was launching a county-wide initiative around integrated services delivery to build durable, positive economic change for families. There was a clear synergy between UWGG and Ready, Ready as both organizations were deeply considering the individual family experience in the context of the various systems working to meet those needs. For instance, UWGG was working to view a family seeking food or workforce assistance or workforce assistance as part of a bigger picture process and not just a one-time bandaid. United Way sought to build a system where providers would work with families as part of a journey that would get them to financial stability as opposed to delivering a single service at a point in time, as a kind of crisis response. Ready, Ready and UWGG’s intentions to work together diverged, possibly because they were each accountable for separate deliverables to different funders and partners. Like the early view of the proposed Guilford County IDS, the plan is for Ready, Ready IDS to integrate with other initiatives depending on what else is built and the inclination of community partners to join data sets. There is certainly the plan to bring other administrative data sets into the IDS and look at its use for evaluative purposes. But, for now, it comes back to the minimum viable product concept Ready, Ready is employing based on guidance from its consultants. Therefore, Ready, Ready IDS is solely focused on building the Navigation services framework and identifying what needs to be in place for that to be well-supported, including building the platform of technologies for evaluation and measurement for learning.

5.2.1.2.2 Partnerships

Ready, Ready’s long term vision is very inclusive. At this point, however, just four of Ready, Ready’s most significant partners in Guilford County will come together to design this navigation infrastructure and then partner on delivering it. The key partners include Nurse-Family Partnership, a nurse home visiting program that works with a few hundred families in Guilford County at at time; Family Connects, a nurse home-visiting program that is short-term and tries to reach every family in Guilford County during the newborn period; Healthy Steps, which is a program embedded in pediatric offices and connects with families during their well-child visits using a triage approach delivering differentiated levels of service. These three programs will deliver navigation to families with whom they have relationships as they meet with them. Ready, Ready also established Community Navigation at Children’s Home Society in Guilford County to work with other families who are not served by Healthy Steps, Nurse-Family Partnership or Family Connects.

Ready, Ready sees a time when the IDS could be so much more. Eventually, other partners in this work will want to look at other outcomes. In turn, the governance body will have to establish parameters for how requests for data are considered and what might be approved. For example, Ready, Ready will need to put policies in place for the time when a university such as University of North Carolina at Greensboro requests data for research. AISP has guidance for these types of agreements, and Ready, Ready will plan for that in the future. Other systems on the radar include NCCARE360 and the United Way of Greater Greensboro and Guilford County, which is looking to integrate data across systems like the Division of Public Health and the Division of Social Services. Aunt Bertha is one other system they are aware of but are not actively pursuing. NC CARE360 is part of an ongoing discussion, and so Ready, Ready is listening to community partners in terms of whether they are using NCCARE360 and whether it’s improving their ability to make referrals, track referrals and close loops with families.

For greater context on partnerships, when Dobson came on staff in 2017, the aforementioned navigation partners were already engaged. There was a period before Ready, Ready hired a Director of Technology, in early 2019, when Dobson convened what was called a Technology Advisory Council. In fact, it’s where Ready, Ready hopes to return. The Technology Advisory Council was active during the time when Ready Ready and UWGG were exploring how to work together. The Council convened enthusiastic partners from the early childhood space and the family financial stability space such as Second Harvest Food Bank, Greensboro AHEC and the Welfare Reform Liaison Project. In the early childhood space, Guilford Child Development was at the table representing Nurse-Family partnership, but also Head Start, Early Head Start and Family Success Center. The Council also had representatives from Cone Health and even tried to engage folks from what was the High Point Hospital which is now part of the Atrium Wake Forest Health. There was also someone from The County and a representative from the school system. The Technology Advisory Council brought people together around the vision of building this integrated data system to help change outcomes at the population level. The participants were brought in as potential owners of the data that would be integrated, so people who might have an interest in partnering and linking their data could be a part of the learning that resulted. The primary task of that body was to help Ready, Ready identify a vendor and move forward on how to build the data system. That process landed Ready, Ready with Sales Force as a vendor and Coastal Cloud as a partner. There were many additional questions, including about what this IDS would look like. One large question was about how an IDS would interplay with NCCARE360. Specific questions about the statewide network include whether Ready, Ready could build something that is separate and runs parallel to NCCARE360, and could Ready, Ready integrate if people are using something separate so that people aren’t using different systems. These questions remain on the table and the plan is for the governance team to do that analysis and help determine if and how Ready, Ready can leverage the referral process.

In Guilford County there’s a lot of interest in partnering to do something different. Ready, Ready noted the importance of having people at the table to have those conversations as early as it is relevant for them to be at the table. Right now Ready, Ready is focusing on the navigation partners more narrowly. Ready, Ready doesn’t want to waste people’s time, but they also don’t want to try and bring people in later and have them ask why they weren’t a part of the earliest conversations. At this time, Ready, Ready is working on a communication strategy to lay out some of the staging of the process so people feel connected and up to speed.

5.2.1.2.3 Data Sharing

As described above, Ready, Ready is building Navigation across four partners, namely, Guilford Family Connects, which is out of Guilford County’s Department of Public Health, Nurse-Family Partnerships Guilford Child Development’s Nurse-Family Partnership and Healthy Steps, a program of Zero to Three, and Community Navigation are both at Children Home Society of North Carolina. Their navigation system needed a documentation platform and so they are working with a group called Coastal Cloud, which is an implementation partner for Salesforce, a cloud-based software company. Ready, Ready plans to integrate the documentation of four different providers to learn which family has received navigation prenatally, which family has received navigation at birth, at age one, age two, and age three. In addition, Ready Ready IDS will make clear who’s responsible, for instance, for each family whose child is about to turn two, who’s responsible for providing navigation to that family and whether the system can confirm this level of accountability, as well as link the related documentation. And beyond that, the IDS will track referrals and make documentation accessible across providers to ensure continuity of care. For example, if Community Navigation served a family prenatally and then they made a referral to Nurse-Family Partnership, the plan is for the IDS to support Nurse-Family Partnership in seeing records from the prenatal navigation interactions so that they can provide continuity of care and avoid repeating assessments, for example.Through the sharing of agreed upon records, the family’s process is streamlined, warm and nurturing and really meets their needs as opposed to only the provider’s needs.

To arrive at this point, Ready, Ready had the help of UNC’s National Implementation Research Network in defining the processes for the partners to work together. The processes will feed into the IDS governance process as requirements going forward. Ready’s Ready governance body will define the processes and procedures between partners and those will be some of the requirements for the technology to be able to support. For now, partners will send an excel spreadsheet, monthly, to another partner that lists the families they work with for whom they have consent to share data. In the future, the IDS Governance team will come up with the data sharing agreements to enable that to happen. Until their permanent director of IT assumes leadership, this somewhat manual process will be facilitated by the current interim director and Coastal Cloud, with support from the IBM team.

While the data sharing agreements are in the process of being drafted, Ready, Ready is pretty close to finalizing an MOU between navigation providers on the processes, sharing data, what is shared from prenatal to navigation at birth and so on. The MOUs are higher level and the data sharing agreements will get into the nitty gritty about technical aspects, such as privacy, security.

Ready, Ready’s Governance Structure will also define who has access to data, what parameters are met, and define who will be mining the data for awareness and/or solutions. Through Blue Meridian and the Duke Endowment, MDC is serving as our evaluation partner and building an implementation evaluation, an outcomes evaluation, impact evaluation and a cost study. MDC has their own IRB process. Ready, Ready will need to incorporate their consent into the consent they are getting from its navigation participants. Thus, MDC will have access to data for the evaluation.

5.2.1.3 Funding

5.2.1.3.1 Initial

Duke Endowment made the connection for Ready, Ready to Blue Meridian Partners which is a national philanthropic group of primarily individuals. Their funding from Blue Meridian goes to the Duke Endowment and is passed through either to Ready, Ready or their Navigation Partners. The funding that goes directly to the Navigation Partners is partially to support them in expanding their reach across Guilford County. The funding for the IDS work and the consultants supporting that IDS work goes through Ready, Ready to cover paid consulting contracts with Coastal Cloud and IBM. The Duke Endowment is also matching the support from Blue Meridian. And, in November, 2021, Ready, Ready secured $1.2 million in funding from the newly-signed North Carolina budget. North Carolina approved a funding request from Ready, Ready which was for 1) the IDS and 2) a pilot on providing additional financial support to early care providers. Ready, Ready’s hope is that the state will continue to support staffing and building capacity locally at Ready, Ready. Ready, Ready’s vision includes starting out with Coastal Cloud and then training a team at Ready, Ready to sustain that work as they bring on new and interested partners. Ready, Ready hopes to eventually do the work that is outsourced at the local level once a team is trained.

5.2.1.4 Reflections

5.2.1.4.1 Lessons learned

Building an IDS is an iterative process. It’s important to have the end goal in mind at the start, but this doesn’t mean that the first build is the same as the end goal.There are always intermediate steps between the beginning and the end.

While others have advised that it’s the relationship building that takes time and that the technology can happen really quickly, in C. Dobson’s experience both take a lot of time. The relationship building is more complex and the technology can be more responsive. It may be unique to Ready, Ready because they are building a pretty complex data model. Ready, Ready is working to identify what would be appropriate to connect, what would be the value of connecting that data, what permissions need to be in place, what security needs to be in place, and these are complex questions

Keep the families front and center. This means not relying on providers to name what is best for families but having families in the conversations. In fact, they have paid family representatives on their governance committees to make sure their perspective is heard.

Focus the conversations around what is the ideal experience for the family, rather than what are you gonna do. Things can get territorial, but it helps to keep the focus on the ideal experience for the family and each person’s role in supporting that. And, the partners get very excited because they are all in it for the families and their success. Use the experience of families as a motivator and uniter around reaching the end goal. It is motivating for the partners to put time on their calendars when families are at the center of the work. Ready, Ready has a Parent Leader Network, so family voice has always been central to Ready, Ready’s work.

Because people are typically doing this work in addition to a full-time job, it’s helpful to compensate stakeholders through an Honorarium, for example. The compensation can be for the organization or individual, it’s case by case depending on preference and/or organizational policies.

Identify what the value add is for each partner. Ideally, the IDS is going to make everyone’s work easier, stronger and improve outcomes. Rather than expecting partners to conform to your ideas, reinforce that they are thought partners in the work and maintain an openness to ideas evolving as partners bring their ideas.

Bring in the local partners and representatives from their national offices to give local folks cover to say this would be really helpful if particular changes were implemented. When the national folks are a part of that conversation they can often see the value of what is being considered. Otherwise, there’s a tendency to lean toward, “I don’t know or I’m not sure what I can commit to or I need to run that up the chain.” The alternative situation can inhibit creative solutions.

5.2.1.5 Next Steps

Ready, Ready’s next step is to launch the three-tiered governance structure by bringing those partners together and having the conversations that need to happen. Their consultant from IBM has strong templates on data sharing agreements. These conversations can be sticky, but exciting.

As the Governance Structure comes into place, C. Dobson is working on drafting a document to support shared consent. Currently, Navigation is delivered by four different partners over time, potentially for a family. The goal is to enable each of those partners to see the continuity of the navigation record over time. In the case of only one participating provider, a single consent form would persist over time. Because any given family could potentially work with all four providers, they’re exploring introducing a separate consent that enables the sharing with the other partners on behalf of navigation.To date, Ready, Ready has solicited feedback from partners and families. One of the sticking points is that Ready, Ready would like the consent to be framed as broadly as possible. While families see the value in their navigation information being shared with the next navigator who may be a different organization. However, one of our partners raised the importance of laying out every data point that might be shared with a family so that they can opt in or out. Ready, Ready is working through that. Ready, Ready seeks a HIPAA consultant who can advise around the privacy implications. AISP is clear that the goal is to get to yes because HIPAA’s intent is to enable more coordination. Because some of their partners are linked with medical homes they are uncertain about what that means for their relationship with HIPAA.

5.2.2 Broward Data Collaborative

5.2.2.1 Big Picture

5.2.2.1.1 Origin story

There is a long history of collaboration between system partners and community service providers in Broward County, FL. While the vision for collaboration and sharing data has its roots in a previous Broward Information Network, the Broward Data Collaborative came about with federal funding received in FY 2014 as part of the The US Department of Education Performance Partnership Pilots for Disconnected Youth (P3). In addition to improving outcomes for youth, the P3 Grant intended to help communities address common programmatic and administrative barriers, such as fragmented data systems and the restricted flow of information. To that end, Broward County was afforded the flexibility to braid and blend federal funding sources and identify waivers to smooth requirements so that the community could easily cross-pollinate different federal funding programs that the Children’s Service Council (CSC), an independent taxing authority established by voter referendum in 2000. As Broward County reviewed the various state-level grants the CSC was implementing, along with those being implemented locally, including at CareerSource Broward, it became clear that data sources coming from different federal grants came from different programs connected to different systems. From that point, Broward County pursued developing a collaborative integrated data system (IDS) dedicating $200,000 from the P3 grant to procure a consultant to drive that work.

As the consultant developed the IDS with P3 funding, Broward County CSC was selected to join University of Pennsylvania’s Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy (AISP) and their first cohort of data sharing collaborations. Within this learning community of developing sites, Broward County engaged in extensive training and technical assistance around a framework created to build capacity to link and share data to improve lives.

In this early phase of IDS development and applied learning with AISP, Broward County convened different groups with whom CSC had dyadic data sharing agreements and also agencies who had dyadic data sharing agreements with one another. From there, the team quickly discovered there was almost no input for folks whose data was in the systems to have influence, voice, control, leverage, and interpretation of the collected data. The County understood that they were participating in white supremacy and White Hegemony if they were to continue in a prescriptive manner. In other words, the people who were running these data sources were predominately white, and that the data in the system represented people mostly of color, particularly in Broward County. To proceed without centering a racial equity lens would mean that Broward County’s P3 Pilot efforts would be non-responsive to the Federal vision of the P3 grant. So, along with building the technology and getting the legal agreements in place, the Broward Data Collaborative chose to prioritize building relationships and fostering trust across stakeholders, including community members whose data was in the system. In addition to infusing their work with a racial equity lens, Broward County saw an explicit need to develop processes and agreements leading to a uniform enterprise data sharing agreement. As the Broward Data Collaborative pursued these two goals, they began integrating data in December 2017 using the existing dyadic data sharing agreements.

To address the first of the concerns, the CSC, as host of the Broward Data Collaborative, embarked on an intentional and explicit anti-racism journey in 2015 to understand how historical and structural racism was continuing to inhibit children and families’ success and thriving. In 2016 CSS provided workshops and training on the local history of racism including understanding redlining, the dynamics of segregation and all of the policies and structures that show up in education, healthcare, employment. With this anti-racist work in progress, Broward County saw how essential it was to learn how to build processes for equitable community participation in the data system.

Subsequently, Broward County engaged The Public Science Project at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York to collaborate around the design of Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPR) projects. CBPR brings people together who have different research literacy and different data literacy to leverage the data and bring in new data to create system and policy solutions. Broward County’s first CBPR project started in March 2018 and invited young people from the juvenile justice system, the child welfare system and the behavioral health system to engage as co-researchers with professionals from the respective systems. In this work, participants co-designed research questions and data collection tools, analyzed the data together and, in time, produced research products that addressed systems gaps and issues. Building on the success of the first CBPR project, Broward County embarked on a second project in 2019 with a $50,000 grant from the Florida Institute for Child Welfare. In this journey of bringing people whose data is in the system, system professionals and researchers together we witnessed that it is possible to create non-racialized hierarchical structures around data where it’s not just white people at the top and Black people at the bottom. The Broward Data Collaborative learned that to truly build equitable relationships, it was important to look at data, design the questions and move through the whole process together in a way that is transformative for everyone. It was transformative for the young people who learned research skills, data skills, leadership skills, communication and negotiation skills. At the same time it was transformative for system professionals who worked as co-researchers with the youth to learn non-service system relationships with the young people. As a result, the researchers can now imagine how to engage in a process that is truly more equitable. From the early stages of IDS development, Broward County made a clear choice to pilot alternative structures for connecting community participation to the data system as opposed to just moving forward in a prescriptive manner and it has been truly transformative.

5.2.2.1.2 Scope and purpose

With a federal grant, social service agencies and education agencies in Broward County will be able to share data to make better decisions when it comes to planning, funding and measuring outcomes to improve the lives of children and families.Up to this point, the Broward’s Data Collaborative consists primarily of dyadic data sharing agreements and it uses the data for its own research and evaluation purposes. To move beyond the dyadic structures and see the whole child and the whole family, Broward Data Collaborative actively seeks to secure an enterprise data agreement to ultimately facilitate care coordination in Broward County.

5.2.2.1.3 Where things stand

First, the Broward County Data Collaborative meets regularly and continues to expand its racial equity efforts. The Broward Data Collaborative has been much more successful at creating ways to include the voices of those whose data is in the system and giving those same people opportunities to have some influence and control over how the data is used in their lives and to help them do their own research projects.

Broward Data Collaborative is an integrated data system with a technological framework in place that merges data through an FFT process. Most of the partner agencies are really hesitant to use an API framework. In reality, though, most of the data is only used internally for our own research and evaluation purposes. The Data Collaborative continues to work towards securing the enterprise data sharing agreement so they move to the next phase of care coordination.

5.2.2.2 Particulars

5.2.2.2.1 Host

Children’s Services Council of Broward County is the backbone agency for Broward County’s Children’s Strategic Plan and the innovator of the Broward Data Collaborative. CSC is an independent taxing authority established by voter referendum in 2000 and has a small budget for maintaining data systems, so they are committed to funding the IDS until it becomes its own entity. There’s a Governing Board made up of CEOs from all of the social and educational organizations that are sharing data within the Broward Data Collaborative, and they have met quarterly since its inception in December 2017 to review requests for data, to ensure the sustainability of the systems and oversee its use.

5.2.2.2.2 Partnerships

Broward County has a long history of collaboration between system partners and community service providers, though not necessarily with community members.The Broward County Collaborative partners include the major social services and education services organizations at the county and state level, namely, Children’s Services Council, Broward County Public Schools, Florida Department of Children and Families, Broward Behavioral Health Coalition, Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, ChildNet, Early Learning Coalition of Broward County, Inc, and Broward County Government.Establishing the Broward Data Collaborative has felt like a very loose, organic strategic planning process in that they took a look at the pieces that were needed and decided who’s doing what towards what end. Specifically, the first step was really to learn from AISP regarding the elements of a governance structure and the basics of technology, research procedures and legal agreements. Carl Dasse, Community Systems Administrator, and Sue Gallagher, Chief Innovation Officer, studied these essential IDS components, asked a lot of questions as part of their AISP cohort experience and eventually invited key people in the community to form the Broward Data Collaborative. From the start, each member had the opportunity to articulate what they wanted to get out of the collaboration and, together, the stakeholders drafted a mission and vision for the Broward Data Collaborative. The group also identified equity and transparency as the values necessary to help drive the development of the IDS. The group crafted a few simple bylaws, as well.

Dasse and Gallagher are the staff anchors who create the agendas and do a lot of work between the meetings since they were getting the technical assistance from AISP and understood what it was going to take to actually launch the Broward Data Collaborative. At the quarterly meetings, the Data Collaborative discusses the necessary elements, along with the steps and task assignments.

5.2.2.2.3 Data Sharing

For now, the data is primarily being shared for internal purposes. At this time, data is shared using mostly dyadic agreements in Broward County. For example, CSC shares data with the Broward County Public Schools, the Department of Juvenile Justice and with Child Welfare. And, the Broward County Public Schools has dyadic data sharing agreements with the Department of Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare. One exception to the dyadic agreements, is that there is one state-level authorized integrated data sharing agreement for six or seven partners supporting children in child welfare. This integrated sharing agreement includes the school district, Department of Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare, Broward Sheriff’s Office and other kinds of entities associated with child welfare, but that’s a very limited scope. So, while the Broward Data Collaborative is sharing data in those kinds of pairs, the IDS is not yet able to see the whole child and the whole family. Dasse shared that while the majority of the agreements are between dyads, there is progress toward making a tri-party agreement and that is encouraging.

According to the CSC website, there are data collaborative agreements that allow the Broward County Data Collaborative to bring data into the system and the IDS also has data use licenses to facilitate the release of data for specific purposes such as research, program evaluation or even case management with the appropriate informed consent. With legal data sharing agreements in place we allow data users to submit requests for the data. We have a team of researchers from each of the organizations who come together to review these requests and ensure they are appropriate. From there, data requests go to the database manager who grabs the data, cleans it and releases it to the users once the Governing Board approves it, as well. The governance, legal and research capabilities of the BDC are supported by technology that ensures the privacy and security of all of the data ecosystems that aggregates and analyzes information.

The Broward Data Collaborative maintains the importance of keeping the end users in mind as it should guide what one plans on doing with the data. For example, in Broward County, there are 500 early childhood providers. Approximately, 300 of them are more professionalized, and still there’s a large number of providers caring for children in home settings. So as they’ve created an IDS the focus has been on who from their population would use the data as well as how they will be able to use it, keeping in mind the technological capabilities of different types of early childhood providers. Their focus is on providers, including the case managers or care coordinator managers, the social work staff for the school board and the navigators for the different behavioral health services whether it’s mental health or behavioral health interventions at the various agencies that they fund or that the Broward Behavioral Health Coalition funds. So, the focused audience likely has at least a bachelor’s degree and the capacity to understand how referrals are made for the children and families with whom they are working.

5.2.2.3 Funding

5.2.2.3.1 Initial

As described above, the Broward’s Children’s Services Council wrote in the federal P3 grant about $200,000 to procure a consultant to build the integrated data system.

5.2.2.3.2 Other

The Florida Institute for Child Welfare awarded Broward Data Collaborative a $50,000 grant to complete its second CBPR project in 2019.

Then, as a local funder, Children’s Services Council’s budget of $100 million is based on property values, and there is a small budget for system enhancements like an integrated data system. So, while CSC currently funds the Broward Data Collaborative, the hope is that someday this data system can become its own entity. Until the Broward Data Collaborative is mature enough to do that CSC has committed to financially supporting it.

In terms of what Forsyth County might pursue, Dasse shared that he’s talked with a lot of county folks across the country and there are often funding opportunities pertaining to addressing concerns around individuals and families experiencing homelessness, and that money usually goes through the county. In fact, there are incentives for counties who want to pursue an IDS. The challenge is getting the policy people on first because they’re the ones who can see the vision of how sharing the data could help improve services. Whereas the technical people are often hesitant because of the federal constraints. Look for resources to fund data infrastructure type work in these arenas, as well. Forsyth County could use this funding as the basis for building the functionality of a data system. The connection is that secure housing impacts outcomes for children and it’s likely there’s going to be a good percentage of the homeless population in Forsyth County are children four and under. Children make up about 40% of the homeless population in this country and, in most localities, the larger percentage of those children are under the age of four.

5.2.2.4 Reflections

5.2.2.4.1 Valuable external resources

Broward’s Data Collaborative has strengthened its work by tapping into a body of literature that we’ve engaged for the CBPR projects, for the community voice and agency. A lot of folks are thinking about data justice and ensuring that communities are not further harmed by data infrastructure.Virginia Eubank’s book, Automating Inequality, has been particularly helpful and looking deeply in ways to be truly transformative in this work. And, Kirwan Institute of Ohio State University has Implicit Bias tools that have been helpful, too.

5.2.2.4.2 Successes

The Broward Data Collaborative has seen notable success in that they are seeing the lives of community members improve and they are centering the knowledge and expertise of people whose data is in the system. To be clear, the knowledge, lived experience and expertise of the people being served has intrinsic value for the governance process. These assets cannot be replicated by using people who have not been on the service delivery recipient side of things.

In fact, the second CBPR project was more successful than they expected and is an excellent example of how feedback loops fit into the data life cycle. According to S. Gallagher, feedback loops are structures that support people in different positions and with different perspectives having a continuous communication about what the data is telling us. CBPR is one feedback mechanism, but these structures can also be within advisory boards or other community collaborations. The CBPR project was so successful that S. Gallagher went to their Governance Council and requested money to fully sustain the work of the group of young people that had aged out of the child welfare system. In turn, they created an organizational entity, known as the Youth Systems Organizers (YSO) of Broward, that includes five-to-seven youth and four systems professionals in key roles who meet weekly. The YSO offers training, conducts youth outreach efforts and makes recommendations about how the child welfare system can modify program implementation to make the youth more successful as they age out of the child welfare system. As a result, trust is being developed, new information is being shared and changes are happening. In fact, the lead welfare agency agreed to change the contract it had with six organizations operating residential homes to mandate that an individual living in the group home must participate in the search and hiring process for new staff. This seems like a small change, but it is making a big difference.

Another example within the YSO of how that feedback loop centers community knowledge and expertise is that youth have formal representation on the various community boards that govern different aspects, some by state statute, some by county requirement and some by CSC mandate, for the different areas that fund the child welfare system and the boards consider these new voices. The youth have since been invited to some of the organizations that are responsible for fostering youth, and they have the Transitional Independent Living (TIL) youth who are on the board speak to the parents who have become foster parents to give them perspective about what it’s like to be a foster child. What happens in CBPR is different from traditional outcomes because it centers community knowledge and expertise.

The Broward Data Collaborative made particularly great strides prior to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in 2018. The Data Collaborative had a few years when it was exchanging data with the school district at a pretty rapid clip with an API set up and a soft interpretation of FERPA. During that time, the IDS could search the school district’s database to match on some Personal Identifiable Information (PII) which helped the IDS better align their records with those of the school district. The school district was also proactively providing lists of students enrolled in CSC funded school programs based on demonstrated need. This timely exchange of information meant that each year, they got the contact information for approximately one hundred students who needed the most support and they served a lot of students in the summer and afterschool programs which meant that students were more likely to get promoted from third to fourth grade, promoted to middle school, or graduate high school. This was a promising practice, but due to the mass shooting, that has paused because so many were facing lawsuits.

5.2.2.4.3 Lessons learned

In terms of developing the IDS, Broward Data Collaborative found it helpful to create visuals early on in this process. For instance, Sue Gallagher took a blank piece of paper and wrote down potential partners, specifying whether they worked at the local, regional or at the state level. As they capture it all on one piece of paper and see it then people can begin to imagine themselves as participants in the collaborative. Sharing graphics begins to advance the mental model and, therefore, makes it easier for people to do the work. And you know they’ve used visual tools in terms of who the actual partners are for the Governing Board, what kinds of data fields that they want to share for what purposes. Being very visual can be useful because this stuff can get very abstract very quickly. So if you have three or four initiatives, put them on one piece of paper and say what are the shared outcomes, where’s the overlap so that stakeholders can see how might a data hub serve those initiatives for the larger community.

CSC was born twenty years ago and the knowledge was built on evidence based practices, quantitative performance measures and community indicators. The CBPR work is helping us to broaden the knowledge that they trust and incorporate and now includes community knowledge, skills and expertise. This process creates a different kind of rigor and it can create some tension. It’s a different kind of rigor when multiple perspectives from people with different positions really inform the work right versus we’re telling you this is the objective answer or the objective pathway. It’s also a very different kind of rigor as they’re teaching adults in leadership positions that this is really important knowledge to co-create equity and to improve outcomes.

Patience and persistence is key all across the board. While the data system is not being fully utilized, there are still at least 10 members every quarter who come to the Broward Data Collaborative meetings. When people don’t see action and if it doesn’t seem that things are moving, people will drop off. Both, Dasse and Gallagher feel that they’ve done a good job of finding ways to continue to engage the group, even if it’s not specifically in the actual use of the data system or a data hub as there are lots of conversations that still need to be had about what do they want and how do they do it.

The Data Collaborative was pleasantly surprised at the capacity of young people to be co-researchers and see the value of including non-system professionals in the work of the data system.

Data sharing occurs at the speed of trust. Establishing trust is critical for an IDS to happen.

This work is difficult in large part, because the technology is so easy. And the program people have such a desire to help and change, but we live in a society that is so litigious that there’s such incredible fear, pushback boxing in, short changing, and fake yeses from the legal side. The reason the IDS has gotten this far is simply because Dasse and Gallagher kept smiling and persisting, and every now and then they would break into that circle of trust with one of the attorneys at the highest levels that mattered. Maintain focus on the people, the use case and the program and technology team. Like they said, patience and persistence are key.

One very important consideration is determining local, region, and state engagement. The Data Collaborative has learned that it is really important to engage not just the early childhood providers, and the funders, but to also make sure that there’s someone there from your Early Childhood State Agency, particularly the legal department, because there are some really unique things about the federal law that governs the early childhood space. A first hand experience was when Mark Needle, the facilitator of the Miami-Dade’s CHILD Consortium worked to overcome the fact that the role of the state in managing the early childhood systems was extremely intense. As a result of engaging legal partners to identify issues and partnerships, along with getting a grant to do some work at a regional level, the Florida Department of Education and the Division of Early Learning, once independent entities, merged. Prior to the merger, the two entities interpreted the laws differently, even though the federal privacy law was from the US Department of Education. Basically, data cannot be shared unless it is for early childhood educational purposes directly. For instance, the Early Learning Childhood Coalition can’t share data with The Broward Data Collaborative because it holds K-12 data and behavioral health data. Data leaving an IDS in Florida can only be shared with the ELC if it applies only to the children they serve based on Florida’s interpretation of that federal law. Broward County encouraged folks to not be afraid of FERPA, HIPAA and Substance Abuse and Mental Health (SAMH) because in many cases, there are really specific ways around the obstacles. The same holds true for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) data and cash assistance-type data. In Dasse’s experience, pushback is often related to fear and a lack of understanding that technology exists in the Web today to make data more secure than cash money in the bank.

5.2.2.4.4 Next Steps

With evidence that Broward County has such strong relationship building capabilities and knowledge building around integrated data systems and racial equity, Velatura, a public benefit corporation out of Michigan doing health information exchanges (HIE) recently expressed interest in partnering. Through such a partnership, Broward Data Collaborative would leverage Velatura’s expertise in building integrated data systems which is far more advanced than what is happening in education and social science in the legal, technological, and synthetic data testing realms.The Broward Data Collaborative recognizes that Velatura’s profit motive is different from life outcomes motives, but the plan is to keep the focus, purpose and process in alignment with their values. To arrive at this opportunity, Broward County engaged in six months of intensive one on one consultation with Amazon Web Services to whom they demonstrated their capabilities and persistence. Amazon Web Service came to the BDC through the school district, where they had been building out some technology. It seems AWS surveys the data ecosystem to pinpoint partnership opportunities. The HIE folks really want to know how they can incorporate education data, child welfare data, and juvenile justice data, because the sense is that if it can be done in Broward County, it can be replicated across the US. So, Velatura has an interest in enhancing their model by growing another sector of business and Broward Data Collaborative can get data sharing that helps people. This all will be made possible by a grant that involves Velatura paying AWS up to $250,000 in credits and use that funding to build out the project. They are working on getting the legal data sharing agreements in place. Broward County is encouraged that the public benefit corporation not only comes with resources, but they also see the benefit of improving the human condition.

Additionally, in the fall of 2021, their community received a very competitive Promise Neighborhood Grant, birth through 22, and they’re going to leverage that partnership to also hopefully go through the Broward Data Collaborative. This grant is for $30 million dollars over a five-year period.

5.2.3 The Miami-Dade IDEAS Consortium for Children (Integrating Data for Effectiveness across Systems)

5.2.3.1 Big Picture

5.2.3.1.1 Origin Story

The Miami-Dade IDEAS Consortium for Children came about in 2014 through a multi-year federal research grant from the Institute for Education Sciences (IES). The partnership brought together five institutions representing K-12 and those early childhood agencies providing subsidized childcare and early intervention services. With this grant, the University of Miami and the four additional institutions worked together to identify shared goals and assumptions, as well as to build a strategy toward getting the larger perspective of early childhood needs and solutions in the county. Prior to applying for the IES grant, Rebecca Shearer and others worked over a period of years to develop trusting relationships with one another which led to the decision to integrate data in order to get a bigger picture of early childhood outcomes. It took time for these principal investigators to bring their agencies along. For instance, it took two years to get all partners to sign the initial agreement due to the complexity of the work

At the outset the focus of this demonstration project was two-fold, inquiry and developing a process for using public systems data for continued work. First, the team identified an initial set of cohorts to link and analyze to address a shared set of questions while abiding by an agreed upon set of rules.The partnership surveyed child readiness for learning in public schools and published briefs addressing the initial shared questions. Secondly, The IES grant helped to fulfill the need to institutionalize a process for working together on behalf of the larger community. The grant had an explicit goal to develop an ongoing vision that could be implemented to continue that kind of work.

Next, the IDEAS Consortium applied to join the University of Pennsylvania’s Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy (AISP) second cohort that provided for a facilitator and time to go through this learning process together. With the help of this primary peer network, the IDEAS Consortium developed their vision, their principles, and the initial work that justified the process going forward.

5.2.3.1.2 Scope and purpose

The Miami-Dade IDEAS Consortium for Children is a partnership of the major institutions providing services to the children of Miami-Dade County. The partnership includes the University of Miami, along with Miami-Dade County Public Schools, The Early Learning Coalition of Miami-Dade/Monroe Counties, The Children’s Trust, and The Miami-Dade County Community Action Agency and Human Services Head Start/Early Head Start Program. Its mission is to improve outcomes for all children, from birth through age eight, by aligning information from multiple local programs that support young children and their families. The learning network links the expertise of academics, service systems, and communities to strengthen early childhood research, practice, and policy.

5.2.3.1.3 Where do things stand

With a facilitator on board, the IDEAS Consortium has developed a larger network of partnerships so that they have more formalized community connections and local champion organizations that see the value in the data and can help to vet the use and interpretation, and even the kinds of data that should be collected and used. Also, they now have policy organizations like The Children’s Movement of Florida as one of their partners. The community and policy partners are important to making the work they do relevant and ultimately to translate evidence into policy.

The IDEAS Consortium now has an institutional structure that works and has funding for multi-year work. In fact, the Consortium has three grants that started in the fall of 2021. Despite the progress, there continue to be areas of real distrust because privacy is at stake, and there’s areas of competition between partners, too.

Eventually, the IDEAS Consortium would like to become a warehouse of early childhood efforts. They have the stability and core operations that are necessary and, in the future, they imagine including other entities that likely inform early childhood outcomes. This will require strengthening the interdisciplinary nature of the research itself because child outcomes are not just based on child development and psychology. The initial director of this work had expertise in the areas of child development, and she is collaborative by nature. As a result, there are now a number of folks within the University of Miami as well as other institutions outside of Miami who are academic partners on specific projects, but also informally in developing projects. The IDEAS Consortium has started on this track of bringing in external data through one of their grants. They also have expertise in housing and land use that they want to bring in to help illuminate child outcomes. Really all the things that affect child outcomes could become part of this work, but the IDEAS Consortium is still growing and still in the process of becoming institutionalized.

5.2.3.2 Particulars

5.2.3.2.1 Host

The University of Miami, a private entity, is the backbone for the integration of all of this data to get the big picture.

5.2.3.2.2 Partnerships

The Miami-Dade IDEAS Consortium for Children includes The University of Miami and the four leading systems that impact early learning outcomes: Miami-Dade County Public Schools (includes Head Start and PreK programs), The Early Learning Coalition of Miami-Dade/Monroe Counties, The Children’s Trust, and the Miami-Dade County Head Start/Early Head Start Program.

To build and maintain buy-in and trust among partners, it is a lot about having a mix of the right partners at the start. It’s important to have enough of the data participants that are going to give you what you need to answer the questions and use the findings to achieve your specific purposes, even if it is just getting a big picture of what the problems might be. Whatever the goal is, you need the right data owners to be part of your mix. And, there needs to be, within each organization, a champion, someone who gets it and prioritizes the IDS amidst all of the other competing priorities. Once you have these pieces, you have the beginnings of trust. You have to have someone facilitating the regular meetings who deliberately creates an atmosphere of trust. The core group of agencies that have the capacity to see that when your data is combined, you will get this bigger picture that will be really illuminating to everyone and can be used to answer other questions that follow from that. Once you have that, maintaining trust is just about moving forward at the pace that is sustainable and that everyone can handle. This is not their day job. They are doing this because they believe it’s important to be collaborative to achieve something more important. Something that can’t be done under the silos of each system. Even if the system is a comprehensive network, if there are others involved then they are not the entire network of services affecting child outcomes. They have to see that and agree with that and want the bigger picture. Otherwise, it’s not a question of trust, it’s a question of value. If they don’t value what you are trying to achieve, it’s still going to fall apart.

They also use the community participation action research framework with their community partners where there is co-ownership, co-design, transparency except as it pertains to the privacy of individuals which is also sacrosanct. That’s part of the trust building as well.

5.2.3.3 Funding

5.2.3.3.1 Initial

The Miami-Dade IDEAS Consortium for Children obtained a multi-year research grant from the federal Institute for Education Sciences(IES) beginning in 2014.

5.2.3.3.2 Other

To go beyond the initial IES grant, The Children’s Trust, a dedicated source of revenue established by voter referendum to improve the lives of all children and families in Miami-Dade County, awarded The IDEAS Consortium a five-year grant to develop a learning community that can better align interdisciplinary researchers, agency practitioners, and local community hubs for collective impact affecting young children.

5.2.3.4 Reflections

5.2.3.4.1 Lessons learned

The IDEAS Consortium is a team operation. It is not a one-time download of information, instead the peer network has become a learning community; they evaluate together and even do things together. This is why it takes a long time and why it’s tricky, but it is also why the work can have value because you have organic relations to multiple partner agencies, communities and policy outlets. The IDEAS Consortium is positioning ourselves so the hard work can pay off with systemic impact over time.

This work requires sustained effort to go down this path and mine data for all its uses. It can happen. It can work. It’s the only way to answer these big questions. At this point, the IDEAS Consortium has created an opportunity. For example, IDEAS has a grant around resiliency at the neighborhood level and they are still working closely with neighborhoods around defining those resiliency factors. They are giving voice to the community and creating buy-in through this engagement process.

Secure funding for what are considered the most essential aspects of this work, so that it allows for facilitation, governance and data services and data protection and do it on a multi-year basis to allow for the county to reach the next set of objectives. The only way to do it is to start.

5.2.3.5 Next Steps

IDEAS was just starting the three grants awarded in the fall of 2021. One of them is to develop a learning community with the three neighborhoods and to develop a recurrent measure that could be useful for having a resilience index and for other purposes of alignment of systems. Another one is about putting more focus on transition to kindergarten and maximizing outcomes from early learning systems and the other is looking at the efficient use of some of the resources that are out there including some of the locally innovative things that have been done by Children’s Services Council and to see what impact they are having so they can see where the needs remain and what is working.

IDEAS is working with our local neighborhoods to vet whether the index of resilience they’ve created works. They are working with the school district to create a re-current measure, a population level measure that will allow them to do this on a regular basis.

IDEAS has created an opportunity to do something sustainable that can have systemic impact over time. To do this right you have to go through steps that give everyone voice and buy-in and the ability to ensure that what you are doing with the data is right and appropriate. The resilience index is the future for them but it also has multiple steps to get there.

5.2.4 Allegheny County Data Warehouse

5.2.4.1 Big Picture

5.2.4.1.1 Origin Story

The Allegheny Data Warehouse came about through an initiative to improve the efficiency of the county government in Allegheny, PA. In 1996, the Allegheny County government consolidated what used to be disparate offices into a human services department that includes behavioral health, intellectual disability, homeless services, aging and child welfare, and family support. Alongside those areas, there is an analytics, technology and planning department, an equity engagement office and some additional support offices.

There was then an RFP, in 1998-9, that started with the notion of creating a data warehouse to begin storing their administrative data. After some evaluation, the creators actually backed up a bit as they realized that the primary data system they were using was deemed insufficient. They proceeded to custom build a system to collect the data in better ways and stood up that system in 2000. At that time, Allegheny Data Warehouse just wanted to put their data in a single place. The bones of the data warehouse is a very simple construction that focuses on a services rendered record and includes dates of services, information about the provider providing the service, the name of the service and other similar types of elements.

5.2.4.1.2 Scope and Purpose

The Allegheny County Data Warehouse was created by consolidating publicly-funded human services data. The Data Warehouse brings together and integrates client and service data from a variety of sources to both understand and improve services. It aims to not only improve service to DHS clients, but also to enhance the ability of caseworkers to perform their jobs, enrich the capacity of individuals to manage and administer DHS programs and services, and evaluate the effectiveness and quality of DHS policies and operations.

As folks recognize the real utility of this warehouse, The Allegheny County Data Warehouse has expanded to include additional information that facilitates care coordination.Those at the Allegheny Data Warehouse have engaged with many MOU processes to incorporate data pertaining to Department of Labor, private health plans, Early Intervention, Head Start and it just recently started receiving child subsidy data. The Allegheny County Data Warehouse has grown such that it has data analytics clusters that they refer to as part of the data warehouse. There are some direct services components that have been incorporated, as well.

5.2.4.1.3 Where things stand

One significant breakthrough was after working for over eighteen months with the public schools, DHS and the Pittsburgh Public Schools arrived at an MOU. Prior to that, their efforts were primarily internal and included partnering with other county departments. The process with the school system was a long-term process, and included navigating FERPA, HIPAA and working through the technological details of linking tens of thousands of public school students with data from a variety of DHS programs and services. The Allegheny County Data Warehouse folks diligently worked to educate county solicitors as part of this learning process.

At this point they understand for the largest part how their clients fit together and the overlap of services. They have an automated tool that makes this information accessible. And, almost every day, there is some policy or program in the community that comes into play. For example, there is violence in their downtown area and there are concerns due to police activity and existing homeless shelters. For some, the assumption was that it was the homeless individuals and people with behavioral health issues causing the violence. They were able to use the data to debunk pre-conceptions, as well as inform strategies. They can integrate the data to determine what their strategies should be. In this case, we plan to create a larger and more responsive crisis system, so integrating data helps them to be more proactive. Also, they learned that there is an overlap between Pittsburgh Public schools and DHS services. This overlap reinforced the need to collaborate and communicate around common clients. From there, the community can support the things they need on the behavioral health side in order to support the education of those same individuals. The community almost takes for granted at this point that they can answer these questions with real data. In the case of the schools and DHS, they found an overlap of 60-65% of students. This finding further reinforced the need to find better ways to support their education.

The Allegheny County Data Warehouse tends to actively participate in and support government leaders and task forces that are working together on issues such as the school to prison pipeline. The data help to inform what these initiatives are looking to change. They are always looking to uncover how they can do better for the community.

5.2.4.2 Particulars

5.2.4.2.1 Host

The Allegheny County Data Warehouse is funded and managed by the Department of Human Services (DHS). While there is an understanding that the Data Warehouse is hosted, managed and primarily used by DHS, it is a community resource. The Allegheny Data Warehouse shares data and works with their partners to support what they are doing and uses the integrated data for their partners’ purposes, as well. For example, they support jail operations and ongoing efforts at the health department. Also, in the last few years, they have broadened their definition of governance to include contributors of the Allegheny Data Warehouse. They are working to create more of a shared ownership of the data. Other jurisdictions have a more formal process in Allegheny County, but they do solicit input about how the data will be used and they discuss what is okay and not okay in terms of governance with contributors to The Allegheny County Data Warehouse.

5.2.4.2.2 Partnerships

Simply put,The Allegheny County Data Warehouse has been recruiting partners for twenty-one years. They reported getting the easy ones first and that others, such as the Pittsburgh Public Schools, took more time.The DHS Data Warehouse connects data from DHS programs and several external sources including the local public school systems, the Courts and Jail, and the Housing Authorities of both Allegheny County and the City of Pittsburgh.

5.2.4.3 Funding

5.2.4.3.1 Initial

The Allegheny County Data Warehouse started with a big influx of funding from their local foundation community because it was challenging to get resources from the state or federal government. In particular, the Human Services Integration Fund (HSIF), a coalition of local foundations funded the initial phase of the data warehouse and has supported periodic improvements since.

5.2.4.3.2 Other

Additionally, because of this IDS work, the county is better able to tell a story of the child welfare world to our state and therefore secure funding associated with a needs-based budget. They tell a more compelling story when they can show that a particular mother is utilizing two systems, for instance.

At the federal level, they are also maximizing funding to support operations costs of the warehouse. Systems maintenance is coming out of their programmatic budget by absorbing it as part of their operations. The operational funding is coming through child welfare funding streams.

Finally, because of the creation of the warehouse and their relationships with the foundations, foundations pool their money to maximize for certain focus areas. So instead of individual foundations doing grants for early childhood, for example, the community is identifying areas of needs and then looking at outcomes for their investments. The foundation funding is now funding programs that the warehouse supports to understand.

5.2.4.4 Reflections

5.2.4.4.1 Key external influences

The local foundations are crucial. They provided the seed money to build the data warehouse. And, any time there is a public initiative where data is needed, the foundations are the first ones to encourage that entity to share the data so it can be matched up and provide a broader view. And, foundations generally have ties to leadership in county government, which is also helpful.

The AISP Network provides thoughts on governance with their partners. The Allegheny County Data Warehouse is always learning from other jurisdictions on all topics, even how they use the data. The Federal government is not a leader in this work. States and local jurisdictions have done more.

5.2.4.4.2 Successes

It is sometimes hard to measure these things. However, on a daily basis, they see how workers are better serving clients. They are more quickly able to see the services, they’ve created decision support tools, and predictive risk tools that help make better decisions.

They are willing to fail. They use the information to change course or even discontinue something completely.

5.2.4.4.3 Lessons learned

It has been important to have a real champion in the foundation community, and in particular someone with legal expertise. In their case, this champion helped to broker relationships with the schools. Their champion was external to schools and government but well-respected by both. This individual saw the real benefit of the warehouse even in the early stages of the work.

Allegheny found it beneficial to use an outside consultant to help get agreement internally. Deciding on a philosophical underpinning to all of how they approach things was particularly helpful while navigating and making decisions in the gray areas. This agreement is now part of the annual confidentiality training requirements. Whenever there is disagreement, the team returns to the document that spells out what they agreed to and why. And, to the extent you come across challenges with the laws, many of their providers were concerned with liability. DHS provided clarification for providers by putting in writing that when information goes into the common system, it becomes the common system’s responsibility to protect that information.

Building an IDS requires ongoing resource commitment, for maintenance and governance. Allegheny has learned that this is a constantly evolving process. Once they could pull information together, people do see the utility of it and other partners coming on board. Change requests are an ongoing and large part of the work they do. There’s also a component of innovation. It’s absolutely fine to start really small, like two data systems to start are reasonable and go from there. Now at this maturity stage they have a significant data warehouse.

It’s such a long term process. The work feeds itself. They are always asking how do you get people to stay in the game and continue to think critically rather than take this work for granted. One answer is to pay the analytics team to help the community to use the information. It is essential to have people dedicated to looking at the data regularly whether it’s to use for policy challenges, everyday operations, or getting the right information at the right time.