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The New Federalism and the Paradox of Evaluating State Grant Programs
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| Presenter(s):
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| Eileen Poe-Yamagata,
IMPAQ International LLC,
epyamagata@impaqint.com
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| Abstract:
In March 2005 the U.S. Department of Labor initiated the Reemployment and Eligibility Assessment (REA) program, a state grant program designed to reduce Unemployment Insurance claim durations and erroneous payments to UI beneficiaries. Characteristic of the New Federalism approach to program development and implementation, state grantees were given much flexibility in their program and evaluation design while incorporating a few designated program components. While these approaches may make more efficient use of federal funding, these programs are, at their philosophical core, difficult to evaluate. This is especially true in light of the increased emphasis on evidence-based programming. The New Federalism approach may result in programs implemented differently across states, with multiple or different goals, and no unified program design. This paper will describe the challenges and solutions encountered in helping states develop rigorous state-centric evaluation designs and the approaches used to help acquire the necessary data to measure program impacts.
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Creating an Integrated Data System Across Publicly-funded Agencies in San Francisco
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| Presenter(s):
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| Deborah Sherwood,
San Francisco Department of Public Health,
deborah.sherwood@sfdph.org
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| Abstract:
Program evaluation in government agencies is often hampered by the lack of systems for sharing data across agencies that serve the same clients. This presentation will describe the creation of an integrated data warehouse containing comprehensive data from four child-serving systems in San Francisco: children's mental health, child welfare, juvenile probation, and the school district. The data warehouse, which is updated quarterly, can be used by frontline staff to view individual client histories across systems to improve care coordination, by managers to produce aggregate reports and geo-maps for program planning, and by evaluators to examine service utilization and outcomes for multi-system clients. We will describe the steps involved in obtaining intra-departmental cooperation for data-sharing, establishing data security and quality control measures, and matching youth served in multiple systems. In addition, we will discuss the evaluation challenges and opportunities afforded by access to life-time histories of service utilization across systems.
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