$5.7M in grants available to improve workforce, education data collection

WASHINGTON – Coordination between workforce and education programs at the state level is an integral part of building a better workforce system. To support this continued cooperation, the U.S. Department of Labor announced today the availability of approximately $5.7 million in grants in the sixth round of its Workforce Data Quality Initiative.

The initiative increases understanding at the state level about how education and workforce development programs complement each other and, as a result, promotes greater efficiency.

The department plans to award approximately three grants – with a maximum $1 million award – to eligible State Workforce Agencies, or SWAs. The grants will provide for the development or enhancement of a state workforce longitudinal administrative database. These databases include information on programs that provide training and employment services. They are useful in that the databases track the same type of information on the same subjects at multiple points in time.

In addition – and for the first time – the department plans to award one grant with a maximum amount of $2.7 million to an eligible SWA for the integration of the state’s case management system, performance reporting, and/or fiscal reporting systems with the state’s longitudinal database.

Grantees will be expected to use their longitudinal databases to conduct research and analysis aimed at determining the effectiveness of workforce and education programs and to develop tools to better inform customers about the benefits of the publicly funded workforce system.

The department’s grants are open to eligible SWAs nationwide to improve the quality and availability of workforce data. Grantees will be expected to achieve multiple goals during the three-year grant period. These goals include:

• Developing or improving state workforce longitudinal databases with individual-level information.
• Enabling workforce data to be matched with education data to create longitudinal data systems.
• Improving the quality and breadth of the data in the workforce data systems.
• Using longitudinal data to provide useful information about program operations.
• Analyzing the performance of education and employment training programs.
• Providing user-friendly information to consumers, in the form of scorecards or integrated digital platforms, to help them select the training and education programs that best suit their needs.
• Integrating performance, fiscal, and case management systems with the longitudinal database.

To find out more about the WDQI grants, visit: http://www.doleta.gov/performance/workforcedatagrant09.cfm.