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CHIPS+ Act advances evidence-based policymaking via National Secure Data Service

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By: AIF Staff

This week, President Biden signed into law the CHIPS & Science Act of 2022. The legislation, which was primarily focused on making the United States more competitive with China, also included an important provision establishing a National Secure Data Service (NSDS) demonstration project at the National Science Foundation.

This may seem like a small accomplishment relative to the larger aims of the bill, but it’s an impactful one. Congress’ willingness to advance a National Secure Data Service demonstration project is a positive development for those who believe in evidence-based public policy-making and it is the product of years of hard work.

In 2015-2016, Speaker Ryan was a lead sponsor of legislation that created a bipartisan Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking. This Commission, put simply, was tasked by Congress to provide recommendations on how the federal government could secure, collect, and utilize data to construct effective public policies. 

One of their recommendations was to create a National Secure Data Service. In their 2017 report, the Commission succinctly described why this National Secure Data Service was necessary, saying in part:

 “Better access to these data holds the potential for substantial gains for society. The Commission’s recommendations recognize that the country’s laws and practices are not currently optimized to support the use of data for evidence building, nor in a manner that best protects privacy. To correct these problems, the Commission makes the following recommendations….

“Establish a National Secure Data Service to facilitate access to data for evidence building while ensuring privacy and transparency in how those data are used. As a state-of-the-art resource for improving government’s capacity to use the data it already collects, the National Secure Data Service will be able to temporarily link existing data and provide secure access to those data for exclusively statistical purposes in connection with approved projects.”

Going to great lengths to achieve a balance between data security and accessibility, the Commission also specified that the NSDS had to have specific privacy protections so data was protected.

Following the Commission’s recommendations, Congressman Don Beyer of Virginia introduced stand-alone legislation called National Secure Data Service Act in 2021. The bill would:

“Allow access to government data by qualified researchers for approved purposes, ensuring privacy and transparency for the data service’s activities. Beyer’s bill would create a NSDS demonstration project housed within the National Science Foundation to test and refine approaches that would inform the implementation of a government-wide data linkage and access infrastructure, with the goal of scaling up the project in the future.”

This language from Rep. Beyer’s bill was largely incorporated into the CHIPS & Science Act of 2022. The Data Coalition, one of the leading advocates for the National Secure Data Service, described the multi-year accomplishment this way:

“The NSDS will encourage government and research partners to organize, analyze, and use information in support of evidence-informed decision-making to improve society…. The NSDS can help government officials and researchers meet the demand from decision-makers for useful, high-quality evidence that is timely, relevant, reliable, and detailed enough to inform policy while protecting the privacy of individuals and businesses.”

In the context of an enormous bill focused on semiconductors and competition with China, the creation of a demonstration project for the NSDS may seem insignificant. In fact, it is a meaningful milestone and an instructive reminder for those who want to see greater adoption of evidence-based public policies at the federal level. 

The creation of the NSDS demonstration project shows that getting the government to prioritize evidence-based policy-making will take time. But the time and effort are well worth it because the advancement of the NSDS will ultimately lead to better data collection and data sharing practices by the government. This, in turn, will lead to more evidenced-based public policies and those policies have the ability to help more and more Americans in profound ways. In short, the National Secure Data Service was well worth fighting for. 

Ryan & Policy experts detail rationale for “Connect2Impact” Clearinghouse & evidence-based child welfare programming

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By: AIF Staff

The American Idea Foundation, in consultation with Stand Together, the Sorenson Impact Center, and Notre Dame’s Lab for Economic Opportunities, worked together to create a user-designed clearinghouse that enables caseworkers to identify evidence-based programs and refer children and families to them. 

The clearinghouse, Connect2Impact, was born from a desire to help social service providers identify evidence-based programs more easily. It was designed to fill an information gap that exists in the poverty-fighting space between end-users and those recommending programs and researchers who have evaluated these strategies. In short, it is all too difficult for harried caseworkers or parents to identify programs that truly work, so the clearinghouse aims to centralize this information with an emphasis on evidence and data. 

The federal government has attempted to address this information gap before. It passed the Families First Prevention Services Act which required a new clearinghouse to show which poverty-fighting programs work and which do not. The federal government has also required other clearinghouses — for education, for welfare programs, for job-training programs – but they are rarely utilized by people on the ground. 

Connect2Impact serves to make information about evidence-based programs and strategies available to individuals and families. It started first with child and family welfare programs and plans to broaden the scope of searchable programs going forward.  

The decision to start with child and family welfare programs was made because of the profound effects the COVID-19 pandemic will undoubtedly have on our nation’s youth. A year of isolation, a prolonged disruption of regular routines, and a lengthy removal from in-person schooling is expected to negatively impact all children. Those children at-risk of entering into foster care are even more vulnerable. 

In April 2022, Speaker Ryan convened and moderated a conversation about the thinking behind the Connect2Impact clearinghouse and the importance of promoting evidence-based strategies that make tangible differences in the lives of children. Ryan was joined in conversation by: 

  • Sara Peters, Vice President of Impact and Evaluation, Stand Together Foundation
  • Brendan Perry, Project Design Manager, Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities
  • Lilly Myers, Impact Strategy at Sorenson Impact Center

Excerpts from the policy panel, which have been edited lightly for clarity, follow. Video of the panel discussion can be accessed HERE

Sara Peters on the rationale behind the user-designed Connect2Impact clearinghouse

“Two weeks into COVID-19, I was leading a portfolio practice group and I was talking to a number of non-profit executive directors who were facing the reality of reduced budgets and an increase in program sign-ups. They were dealing with a lot of the sign-ups that they weren’t predicting — people who are anticipating getting laid off or people who were worried and on the precipice of poverty. These people were increasing the needed dosage of programming and they wanted families to receive it but program directors didn’t think they were ideally prepared to serve all of those new clients.

 “I started to have some conversations about why isn’t there a clearinghouse that is client-focused and customer-focused, where you have some predictive algorithms where we can load some information from randomized control trials and external validations and some other programmatic characteristics? It would be a clearinghouse where users can self-select the characteristics that matter and over time, we can have a recommendation engine that program directors and program leaders and families can use when looking for services.” 

Brendan Perry on the Literature Review that informed Connect2Impact’s approach

“What we learned was that while there are a lot of studies out there and a lot of research has been done on child welfare programs, around 500 studies that we found, there are really far too few studies that are conducting rigorous research with large enough sample sizes where you’re able to get a really clear result. 

“And so, after we went through all of these, there are maybe only 20 or so studies that met our highest level of rigor and the highest level of a sample size. This really leads to a landscape where there is less causal evidence on the effectiveness of programs, which is less than ideal for such an important issue. Broadly, I would say we learned that there’s a need for more rigorous, large-scale studies on child welfare programs that not only improve our understanding of what works, but also for whom they have worked.” 

Lily Myers on working with Utah-based providers to make Connect2Impact relevant:

“After the initial pilot program, a beta-version of the website was created and seeded with programs that were evidence-based and local to Salt Lake County. We were able to sit down with supervisors and practitioners from the Utah Department of Child and Family Services to have them actually use the website, walk them through the features, and get their feedback on what was useful and what they wanted to see from it. 

“Overall, the response was incredibly positive. They were very excited about this kind of tool. A lot of times, the way that they find programs for their clients is word of mouth or something even as rudimentary as Googling to find what’s local to them. So, the opportunity to have a tool that combines what programs are actually local to their area that they can feasibly recommend for their clients and what the evidence is behind them, that was very valuable to those practitioners….”

“It was a big endeavor to just map out and characterize the programs offered to children and families within Salt Lake County. But from there, we’ve discussed opening it up to Utah as a whole and characterizing all of the state’s programs. I think it would be tremendously useful and impactful moving into other states and even starting just with larger cities.”

Ryan on the government’s lagging behind in developing data-driven child welfare strategies

“Until recently, policymakers have ignored the child welfare space. The recent passage of the Families First Prevention Services Act was the first major reform to this area going back to the early 1980s. This isn’t for a lack of problems that the system has been experiencing – far too many children were taken out of their homes too quickly, while other children were left languishing in really difficult situations. We just weren’t getting it right. 

“Thankfully, there are a number of hard-working individuals in this space who are working to provide permanent safe homes to children. And even more importantly, we are working to prevent the need for youth to enter the foster care system in the first place. The creation of a searchable and accessible website for caseworkers and for other people who refer children and families to the child welfare space seemed necessary and that’s why we created Connect2Impact.”  

Perry: Expanding usage of evidence-based programs requires more research and greater dissemination

“One part of it is getting research and one part is getting the study results into the hands of practitioners. I think the Connect2Impact tool is going to be really vital in bridging that gap. And as you said, I think it also revealed to us that there are some important research questions that aren’t adequately addressed in the existing literature. One of which might just be what the effects of these programs are on some of the long-term outcomes. 

“It’s great to know what the effect of program X is on reunification or days in foster care. But it would be even more helpful to know what the effect of program X is on high school completion, college completion, interactions with the criminal justice system, and earnings down the road, and to understand the long-term impact of these programs….”

“In terms of what researchers should be doing to make evidence more usable, obviously, academic papers are a big part of what researchers do and they’re important to validate results but we need to stop thinking about academic papers as an end-product in any way. If a paper that’s evaluating your program is published and then it just sits on the shelf of another academic, it’s really not doing what it’s supposed to be doing and that is to inform the end users, the case managers who are sitting there with clients and policymakers who are making decisions. 

“There is some onus on researchers and I know that we feel this a lot, but we have to take academic results and then package them and disseminate them in a way that can be used by the audiences that really need the information. I think this tool will go a long way in bridging that gap but there’s certainly a need for more work to be done on this and the creation of evidence and how evidence is disseminated to these different groups.”

Sara Peters on how evidence matters, but simple factors may matter more to end-users: 

“From my discussions with practitioners, [the value of evidence] varied a lot based on their ability or frequency of using evidence in the behind-the-scenes decision-making of the programs that they use. From the evidence standpoint… it’s not as cut and dry as is there evidence or isn’t there evidence. All of these trials and studies have some kind of limitations and how applicable they are on certain sample populations. 

“So, we realized the big thing that practitioners are looking at and do care about is the sample population and the groups that this research was done on and that ended up being a strong piece of information that workers on the ground want to see and want to be able to assess for themselves.”

Brendan Perry on how Notre Dame’s Lab for Economic Opportunities helps non-profits utilize data 

“It’s definitely a long and exciting process sometimes, but really, it’s all about finding those innovators who are on the ground, who are doing something that they believe is moving the needle on poverty. It’s about those groups that are having a positive impact and showing these organizations the basics and the importance of doing impact evaluations.

“And then from there, our goal is really walking hand-in-hand with them to see how we can overlay a research design that’s going to be minimally impactful to their everyday work because we know that doing research is just another thing on their plate sometimes. We want to take as much of the burden from them as possible so that we can design a rigorous study in the least invasive way. 

“Once we get it up and running, we work with them to understand the results and that brings us to how we disseminate results. One thing that we’ve begun to do as a way of sort of increasing dissemination is to build engagement plans with our partners about how to use results – whether those results are positive, negative or neutral – so that we can communicate to their internal teams what the results were, what they mean, and then communicate with other providers in the same space to put on different webinars, to have connections to funders, to help make connections to the media, connections to local policymakers, and be able to promote the result in a way that’s going to improve programming for their current clients and their future clients…. 

“Then finally, a big part of using evidence is replication so when we find those all-star, rock-star programs, it’s about making sure that we can package those programs and describe them in a way that makes them easy to scale and replicate in other places.”

This panel discussion on child welfare was part of a quarterly series of policy conversations hosted by the American Idea Foundation to draw attention to evidence-based policies aimed at expanding economic opportunities. Past policy conversations have focused on building a 21st century workforce, reforming the Earned Income Tax Credit, reducing recidivism and promoting 2nd chances, and properly implementing Opportunity Zones.  

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Reauthorizing MIECHV & Recognizing Evidence-Based Successes in Fighting Poverty

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By: AIF Staff

The American Idea Foundation has long believed that Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program provides a useful example of how the government can move towards evidence-based programming and better allocate resources to more effectively fight poverty. As this home-visitation program is considered for reauthorization by Congress later this year, the American Idea Foundation will push lawmakers to reward MIECHV’s data-driven approach and understand the impact it is having in communities across the country.

MIECHV is a time-intensive, customized approach to helping parents from before their child’s birth through the first years of the child’s life. The First Five Years Fund summarized the program’s approach well, stating:

“Evidence-based home visiting programs, like those made possible by MIECHV, pair families with limited support and resources with trained home visitors such as nurses, social workers, and educators. Home visitors meet with families at home and work with families from pregnancy through their child’s kindergarten entry to help lay the foundation for the health, education, development, and economic self-sufficiency of the entire family. Visits by caring, experienced professionals can turn good intentions into good parenting, breaking generations-long cycles of poverty, addiction, abuse, and despair.”

MIECHV is administered by the federal government through grants to states, territories, and tribes allowing these entities to create voluntary programs, backed by data and evidence, to help families and parents build happy and healthy homes for children. It is results-based and has been subject to more rigorous evaluations than any other single poverty-fighting program.

At a recent hearing held by the House Ways and Means Committee, Congresswoman Jackie Walorski of Indiana highlighted the program’s success – and the reasons for it, saying in part:

“MIECHV is a program that gets results. This program builds upon decades of research that proves home visits by a nurse, social worker, or other trained professional during pregnancy and in the first years of a child’s life help prevent child abuse and neglect, support positive parenting, improve maternal and child health, and promote child development and school readiness….

“The program is now up for reauthorization again this year. What makes MIECHV unique is that funding is tied to evidence. Most federal programs operate in a black box. Less than $1 out of every $100 the government spends is backed by even the most basic evidence that the money is being spent wisely. Unlike most federal social welfare programs, we know what outcomes taxpayers can expect from our investments in MIECHV. This program serves as a model for how other programs for low-income families should be funded.

“For a home visiting model to earn taxpayer support, an evaluation must prove the program has demonstrated significant, positive outcomes such as preventing child abuse and neglect, improving maternal and child health, and improving economic independence…. As we turn to reauthorization, Republican priorities include providing a full 5-year reauthorization to give states and implementing organizations the certainty they need to conduct long-term planning.

“We aim to raise awareness of MIECHV’s high-quality outcomes to promote this time-tested program. And, we must apply lessons learned during the pandemic, specifically from the success of remote visits that grew efficiency while preserving the positive outcomes we expect from this evidence-based model.

“Few federal social programs have been evaluated to determine if they are working, and almost none have conditioned funding on evidence of effectiveness. When we spend limited taxpayer dollars to help those in need, we must ensure we’re investing in programs that deliver results.”

Without question, MIECHV is a bipartisan success story, supported by the administrations of Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump, and now Biden. Most recently, the Biden Administration announced millions in grants via the American Rescue Plan. There was a tremendous amount wrong with the American Rescue Plan, but funding MIECHV at more robust levels was right.

The evidence of MIECHV’s positive impact on children and families has been well-documented and the American Idea Foundation’s visit to a South Carolina Nurse Family Partnership program provided a visual testament to the difference its making in people’s lives.  

To learn more about the program’s impact, watch: Lessons from the Front Lines of South Carolina.

The American Idea Foundation believes that the condition of your birth should not determine the outcome of your life, and the MIECHV program provides a worthwhile example of how the federal government, working in tandem with researchers and organizations at the state and local level, can ensure that all children have the opportunity to succeed and lead productive lives. It is an approach that should be replicated as leaders work to meet other pressing policy challenges.