Narrative: III. b. 6. A. i.

Data Governance:  The previous four years the Wisconsin WIOA State Plan Partners worked to establish data governance and create a vison for Collaborative IT projects to support a workforce system in alignment and one that provides an efficient, seamless customer experience. 

The governance is made up of a Data Steward Committee and the Data Governance Rules of Order used by the WIOA Leadership Team (WLT) when deciding or ruling on data governance issues and projects.  The purpose of the governance is to ensure WIOA Data, although submitted separately, is trusted, understood, meets business needs, and provides accountability to the system rules and policies.  This work in the prior plan included establishing a WIOA data dictionary that includes outlining the meta data each agency must capture to outline the process and quality descriptions for all data used in the creation of individual core program statewide performance reports.  This governance also provides the vehicle to process and approve collaborative IT and data sharing solutions.  Going forward this group with WIOA Leadership Team authority, will continue to maintain the data dictionary and processes to approve collaborative IT and data sharing solutions.  This will include training the new State Plan Partners of SNAP, TANF, and DOC on the dictionary and meta data needed to be gathered and maintained and the WLT Data Governance Rules of Order for raising and approving any work related to data or data governance. During the PY20-23 State Plan period, participating state plan partners have the option to join the Data Governance Rules of Order and the individual data integration projects. References in this section, “Program Data” to “participating partners” or “participating agencies” highlights the option State Plan Partners have to opt out of any integrated data or data governance planned actions.  

 Policy and Guiding Principles Team and Communications Team:  The cross-agency teams that drive any business requirements for IT solutions comes from these two teams.  They are responsible for identifying and making staff aware of, or establishing and training staff on best practices or policies for integrated or coordinated service delivery, including co-enrollment and referral practices. 

How they work together?  The Policy and Guiding Principles Team and the Communications Team highlight what functionality the IT or data sharing systems need to support, the Data Steward Team researches and works with IT staff to identify possible IT collaborative solutions and the Data Governance Rules of Order used by the WIOA Leadership Team, establish the voting structure to approve collaborative IT work.     

• Co-manage cases (leveraging resources) as appropriate;
• Make appropriate referrals to core and partner programs;
• Report federal deliverables and evaluate programs; and
• Improve the customer experience. 

Four Areas of Focus for Collaborative Technical Work for Participating Partners:   

• Systems will support sharing information to improve the process, leading to improved outcomes.  This includes business and technical solutions to improve coordinated services, reduce duplication and leverage individual program strengths and resources to improve the overall customer experience.       
  • One of the IT solutions participating partners will focus on is to make the referral process and co-managed cases more efficient and streamlined for the customer.                       
    • Based on initial technical research, it was determined the best place to build a common IT solution to support more integrated or streamlined service was at the referral process.  This includes an electronic system to support making referrals between agencies to reduce the duplication of questions and streamline the customer experience, as well as provide a spectrum of support to connect the referred person to the referral agency. 
    • The long-term goal is for this system to support appropriate sharing of individual program information between staff for co-enrolled individuals.
    • In all cases where PII and programmatic information is exchanged at the individual level, data policies will enforce, and electronic systems will be designed, to provide the informed choice to the customer, where they are not only made aware of the sharing, but also have the option to opt in or out of sharing at this level.    
• Systems will support combining data to create cross program reports.  The specific reports are controlled by the WLT using the Data Governance Rules of Order to plan, coordinate and complete work on any statewide combined data reports.  One example of this reporting is the co-enrollment reports that Title I, III, IV, TAA, and JVSG programs have collaborated to create.  These reports include the ability to see co-enrollment by program and locations.  They can also filter by Program Year, and separate co-enrollment by reportable and participant status of the individuals. In the PY16-19 State Plan these reports were developed with all of the State Plan partner programs, and tested, but were not released for use by the partners for any data other than the Title II required co-enrollment reporting. During the PY20-23 State Plan timeframe we will work on removing Title II data from the reports, establishing report terms of use for participating agencies, and adding new State Plan partners as appropriate. 
• Systems will support, where possible and appropriate, automated gathering of data elements that are required at intake and for outcomes reporting.  The goal is to reduce staff and customer time on administrative tasks and improve data quality by finding quality sources of data, establish appropriate data sharing agreements, and use these systems to collect of specific intake and/or outcome required data elements.          
  • During the PY16-19 State Plan, DWD worked to establish a data sharing agreement with the National Student Clearing House (NSCH) and establish an automated exchange of information.  In the PY20-23 State Plan, these data will flow into the IRIS case management system and the ASSET case management system to populate postsecondary information including graduation and credential attainment.   
  • During the PY20-23 State Plan participating partners plan to build on this success and automate the core program data elements related to co-enrollment. Title I, III, IV must report on the individual level if the person is receiving services from one of the other WIOA core programs.  The goal is to establish data sharing agreements and IT systems to automate this data element through a data exchange process potentially eliminating the need for the customer to self-report.
  • After participating partners automate core program elements, the next step will be to work with DPI and other state agencies to automate other sources of information. 
• System will work to support program evaluations.  This not only includes making data, as appropriate, available for research, but also to establish processes for requesting, approving and completing evaluations to identify effective interventions and successful service strategies.            
  • During the PY16-19 State Plan, participating agencies worked to create a data governance process and policy for creating, submitting and approving evaluation proposals and corresponding data projects that use combined data while following all appropriate data security and protection laws. During this State Plan, participating agencies will carry out this evaluation project and publish findings. 
  • DWD has received a WDQI grant. This funding will be used to establish the Workforce Data Integration System that allows participating partners to tie data more efficiently for operational and evaluation purposes including:                        
    • technical work to make evaluations easily repeatable and efficient
    • allowing evaluations that include a broader spectrum of source data that will link between systems including UI wage and claim data, as well as WIOA Program Data and non-WIOA workforce data including Registered Apprenticeship and Youth Apprenticeship program and the Wisconsin Fast Forward Program.
    •  establish processes to request and approve data for evaluations or research, and a process to review and approve the findings prior to publishing.    

Linking Source Records:  To facilitate the above projects, the WIOA Partnership with DWD acting as lead agency, has procured a licensee for a tool that matches individuals between different source systems.  This matching solution does not require the systems gather the same PII type or format, and it is not dependent on Social Security Number.  It uses sophisticated algorithms and the most up to date name matching technology.  This tool may be used, as appropriate and allowed by data security rules, policies and data sharing agreements, between participating agencies’ data systems to provide the link between individual source system records to support data sharing in both reporting and real time applications.  Work with happen in this State Plan to plumb the tool, as appropriate to participating partners’ source systems.   

The current planned IT projects for Wisconsin "Common Intake" System: 

This tool above will be used for specific data sharing between participating partners.  This includes sharing data between the electronic case management systems of participating partners to identify if a participant is already working with another partner, the ability to make and track electronic referrals between participating partners, and the ability to collect basic information from other systems to help streamline the customer experience for those customers who work with more than one partner agency.  The matching tool will combine data between participating partners to generate co-enrollment reports to enable an evaluation of the impact of co-enrollment.  The matching tool will reduce the number of duplicated records, created through human error, in the participating  program's management information system to maximize data quality.  The participating programs will identify reliable data sources from third parties to automate collection of required data elements to reduce customer and staff burden.