Narrative: III. b. 1.

Arkansas Job Link (AJL) is Arkansas’ integrated intake, case management, and reporting system and is a part of the America’s Job Link Alliance (AJLA).  The Arkansas Division of Workforce Services utilizes AJL as a staff assisted and self—service tool for the Labor Exchange, Employment Services, Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), Reemployment  Services and Eligibility Assessment (RESEA) and Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA)  beneficiaries and to assist employers when recruiting viable employment candidates. 

AJL is the state’s integrated web-based workforce development management information system (MIS) used by the state and local areas to share and manage participant data between the Wagner-Peyser program, the Trade Adjustment Assistance program and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act program. AJL provides jobseekers, employers, and workforce development professionals with tremendous flexibility and capacity for accessing, tracking, and reporting services: self-directed, staff-facilitated, staff-assisted, and case management.

All staff has access to and can view all services provided to clients regardless of individual program funding. This approach allows funding streams (regardless of specific target group) to consider the “complete package” of services provided or made available to the client reducing duplication of effort and maximizing outcomes. It also facilitates a single process to extract required data for the generation and submission of performance or demographic client details as required by current mandates. In short AJL provides all workforce partners with a “whole person view” of the services available, or provided to, each client or group.

Arkansas has taken a lead in the development of a direct electronic interface between our AJL and Unemployment Insurance (UI) systems. Through this interface we ensure that all UI claimants are registered for work and eliminates repetitive information gathering from UI claimants. We have also implemented a proactive approach to Reemployment Services (RES) and Reemployment and Eligibility Assessments (REA) to claimants with the goal of reducing the average length of time a client is out of work. This effort would have been exponentially more difficult if we were not dealing with an integrated service delivery system. Through the use of electronic wage matching, records are regularly updated with information received from the State and other sources to identify those who have obtained employment and calculate average earnings.

Each quarter, quarterly wage record information is loaded into AJL to measure the progress on State and local common performance measures. The quarterly wage information includes wages paid to an individual, the social security account number, the name of the individual, and the Federal employer identification number of the employer paying the wages to the individual. State wage records are available to other member states through the Wage Record Interchange System (WRIS) on a quarterly basis. Likewise, Arkansas is able to track participants that work or move outside of Arkansas for performance measurement purposes through WRIS wage records from member states.

All local WIOA Title I service providers have access to the state wage record information for the purpose of measuring local common performance measures. AJL can be found at https://www.arjoblink.arkansas.gov.

Literacy, Adult and Community Education System (LACES), designed by Literacy Pro, is Adult Education's data management system. Arkansas Adult Education has used the data management system in Arkansas since the 2017-2018 program year. The policies and use of LACES are written into the Adult Education's Assessment Policy and Distance Learning Guidelines and Adult Education Program Policies. LACES is a key component of strategy-making, funding, and reporting. The system is built with many key automatic reports informative for student and program progress and can report attendance and performance for all national reporting tables. Adult Education state staff has provided ongoing technical assistance to field users and aligned the policies to regulate the practice of reporting in a timely and accurate manner. With timely and accurate reporting, training can be focused on addressing possible errors or changes in policy, procedure, or practice. Through LACES, monitoring is done on a site level as well as a state level. Consistent and accurate reporting allows the state to monitor progress and trends over time. Consistency in reporting practice allows Adult Education in Arkansas to analyze accurate data, make key decisions, or give immediate assistance. Functions in LACES allow Adult Education to provide files to the Arkansas Division of Higher Education (ADHE) and the Division of Workforce Services (DWS) for data matching purposes, which can then be uploaded into LACES for reporting.

Arkansas Rehabilitation Services uses a cloud-based case management system.

DSB has used Alliance’s AWARE Enterprise case management system since 2012. Procedures for AWARE are included in DSB’s training and policy guidance provided to staff. AWARE collects all the data used to identify DSB’s success in performance measures and case history. The data from this system is used to review program success and develop improvement plans. DSB actively works with Alliance to improve reporting accuracy and adaptations to best meet the needs of the agency.