Coleridge’s 3rd Annual Convening on linked administrative data brings all the nerds to the yard

Photo by Silvia from Pixabay

We wanted to take some time to write about an exciting event happening at the end of the month, hosted by The Coleridge Initiative. The Coleridge Initiative is a nonprofit organization that works with governments to ensure that data can be accessed and utilized more effectively for decision-making for the public interest.

This year, the convening is happening March 27-29th in Washington, D.C, titled Cross-Agency Collaboration for Evidence-Building. As you might have surmised from the title, this year’s convening will explore the transformative potential of collaborations between government agencies and researchers that use linked administrative data to improve government programs.

We’ve been increasingly interested in the (re)use of administrative data by the social sector, and are always trying to learn about new ways to apply and encourage its use more broadly. It is an underused tool that could help improve the quality and functioning of social programs, and help us understand their impacts more generally. We often see resources not being used (or not being used as well as they could) in the sector, so we’re excited to learn more about efforts to make use of the potential opportunities in using administrative data. 

A lot of impact measurement is wasted, poorly designed and poorly carried out (for reasons well explained by Caroline Fiennes). There is another way forward for impact measurement - finding ways to use administrative data to access the outcomes of social programs and interventions. Right now, the government seems to be (unintentionally or not) holding our outcomes data “hostage” in some ways - meaning that much of the time, after we have spent time and energy designing and implementing interventions in the nonprofit sector, we don't really know their outcomes. 

For now, using administrative data is still a newer practice. It is not alway an easy tool to manipulate and it requires a specific set of skills to be effective in using it - not to mention the many difficulties in linking it and accessing it consistently. This conference is an important instance of developing a community of practice that can learn collectively about how to practice this work effectively, and how to build more effective partnerships to unlock the potential of administrative data. New developments in approaching these challenges in the sector are exciting as there are not many spaces where this is the focus. We look forward to attending!