A new resource to improve data governance in pay for success

Reliable data and strong local partnerships allow governments and service providers to understand a target population, track the population’s activities, and measure the impact of their programs. Robust data are essential for localities pursuing pay for success (PFS) projects to be able to identify their target population and measure outcomes that are linked to payments. But accessing and using these data that are critical to program success can be daunting.

This week, the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP)—a collaboration between the Urban Institute and more than 30 local partner organizations that strive to tackle challenges in education, health, housing, economic opportunity, and public safety—released a new Resource Guide on Data Governance and Security.  The guide provides insights and tools to help organizations improve their data policies and practices.

With contributions from the Urban Institute’s Pay for Success Initiative, NNIP’s new guide highlights data governance considerations that are especially relevant to sites interested in implementing a PFS project. Through experiences from NNIP network partners and similar organizations, the guide shows that having strong data intake and management capacities can help local governments and organizations track the impact of their services and allocate resources to the most effective programs. The guide presents advice and annotated resources for the three elements of a data governance program:

1. protecting privacy and human subjects, as many data sources may be collected at the individual level and some are protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) or the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA);
2. ensuring data security, so that it is only used for the agreed upon purpose or research; and
3. managing the data life cycle, or the acquisition, processing, dissemination, and destruction of data at the end of an agreed-upon time frame.

Data Governance and Pay for Success

Though the guide is applicable for non-sensitive data, it is primarily geared toward organizations managing confidential data, such as data used in integrated data systems (which link administrative data across multiple agencies) or PFS projects. Because PFS projects tie payments to outcomes in multiple service systems—for example, criminal justice and housing— it is vital that a jurisdiction has a robust data system and strong data-sharing agreements in place throughout the project.

A data-sharing agreement for a PFS project should include:

• access for organizations doing the evaluation or validation of findings and acknowledgement of the evaluator’s independence,
• a clearly defined schedule of reporting data (such as monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or annually),
• and the link between outcome data and payments (in the Denver SIB, for example,$15.12 was paid per day for stable housing days after days in jail were subtracted). 

While there are specific considerations for PFS data-sharing agreements, any project aiming to track impact or outcomes should have a strong data system it can rely on. To help jurisdictions with this process, NNIP has also provided an updated collection of more than 50 data-sharing agreements that include a range of different data sources (service providers, departments of health, education, justice, and children and families) and issue areas (labor and human services, education, criminal justice, housing and homelessness, transportation, and health and health care). Sites that want to improve their data systems or implement a PFS project can look to this resource for examples of how other localities have written and executed successful data-sharing arrangements.

Have a Pay for Success question? Ask our experts here!

As an organization, the Urban Institute does not take positions on issues. Scholars are independent and empowered to share their evidence-based views and recommendations shaped by research. Photo via Shutterstock.