The Journey of Advancing Equitable Data Practice in our Connecticut Organizations
Last month, over 40 data users joined together to learn from real-life examples of equitable data practice. We heard from four group members who have attended many of the sessions we have run in the last two years. While the discussion was rich and difficult to summarize in a blog post, here are some of the highlights.
Data democratization promotes data equity. Susan Smith (Director of Business Intelligence + Analytics, Connecticut Department of Social Services) reminded us that “data has a power and control component.” By giving data back to the community, to individuals who are in the data and who helped to create the data, it’s a way to let go of some of that control as an institution. CT DSS has realized that not everyone can use the data in the ways they have commonly shared data (through the CT Open Data Portal, through P20WIN, or through DSS data requests) and have created a “Data Accessibility Continuum” to provide accessible data for people with a variety of levels of data literacy. The newly launched People Served dashboard is just one way CT DSS is providing more accessible data products to the public.
Why are we collecting it? Bianca Shinn-Desras (Director of Family Advocacy at Domus Kids) talked about the journey of Domus Kids away from collecting all the survey data possible to being really intentional about what they’re collecting and ensuring they are actually USING it. One of the small groups discussed this topic and shared an important belief: there should be a purpose and function of everything we’re collecting. This relates to the principle of beneficence.
Disaggregation of data. The topic of data disaggregation came up within each of the examples that were shared. Justin Mahalak, Data & Quality Analyst at Child First, talked about an Equity Analysis he has been doing as an internal project. His question is are there differences in outcomes among people of different racial and ethnic groups in their programs? Because they have been collecting data over time, they now have enough data to look at whether racial bias is occurring not just among racial groups across all programs, but whether there are differential outcomes in different geographic regions.
Bianca also talked about the importance of being able to disaggregate by race and ethnicity when looking at suspension data in Bridgeport. However, they realized that they had to dig deeper and look not only at the number of days children have been suspended since schools reopened in 2021, but also the number of minutes children have been suspended. What Domus Kids found shocked them – while analysis of suspension data nationally (by day) has found that Black children experience suspension at four times the rate of white children, this disaggregation revealed that Black children are experiencing suspension at six times the rate of white children.
Stakeholder engagement. Bianca also highlighted that when Domus Kids found this staggering new statistic, they asked themselves, “what are we going to do about this?” Domus Kids has been engaging community members at all levels – from administrators to nonprofits to families – to identify ways that all levels can respond to ensure that Black children are better served by the Bridgeport Public Schools.
Additionally, Susan brought forward a crucial point – when creating their People Served dashboard, her team engaged in conversations with stakeholders to ensure that the dashboard would truly be useful and usable by those who would need the information.
Collection of demographic data. Alissa Johnston, Performance Measurement Coordinator at Capital Workforce Partners, shared that CWP decided to change their database to include more demographic categories that are reflective of more people’s identities. In particular, they now collect more inclusive race and gender identity data. One of the challenges CWP has found is in the trickle-down to the paper intake forms that are used in programs across the region. Changing the forms is taking some time. One of the bigger challenges relates to those who are already part of their database – how to ensure that their racial and gender categories are comparable over time? Since they only collect racial and gender data upon intake, there is no opportunity to collect updated data on all of their participants – including their past participants. This represents the complexity of applying equitable data practices, and CWP is working to ensure they can use and compare all of their data moving forward.
Capacity (human and time) are biggest barriers. For Justin, the Equity Analysis he is engaged in is an internal project. There’s no funder funding it or requesting Child First report on it. So many other urgent tasks and projects come in the door that divert his time away from this important work. Alissa also talked about the urgency of requests that come in that take her time away from completing the rollout of expanded demographic data collection. There are no easy answers when it comes to integrating equitable data practices, and this work takes time.
There was additional rich discussion – and if you join us for our next session, you can be part! But Susan left us with some encouragement as we all seek to implement equitable data practices that we all can benefit from:
Some Days are Going to make you want to quit
It’s not going to be perfect + that’s not a bad thing
It’s important to get broad input along the way
By committing to implementing this work you can be a catalyst!
Plan + Commit to iterate and update
This work excites the possible!
Some of the other resources that came up through this discussion included:
Improving Demographic Data Collection in Connecticut (on the topic of Section 11 (p. 14) of Public Act 21-35)
Want to Improve Your Demographic Data Collection? This Guide Can Help! (Presentation to the Equity in Data Community of Practice on the More Than Numbers report)
Principles for Advancing Equitable Data Practice (Urban Institute)
You can learn more about the Equity in Data Community of Practice here or look through the resources that have been shared from our sessions. We meet monthly, and you can sign up to join us here (curiosity and interest in data are the only requirements!). If you are interested to learn more about CTData, check out what we do and the services we provide. For training and tips on how to use data to inform your personal and professional life, register for one of our CTData Academy workshops or browse our blog. You can keep up with us by subscribing to the CTData newsletter and following us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.