Through the first three quarters of 2019, the Eastside Pathways Partnership collaboratively built a Strategic Plan to reaffirm its mission, vision and outcomes and define a clear pathway to get there. Within this plan, there is a clear call for reliance on data and the use of time-bound and targeted measures. The imperative is for the Partnership, as a whole, to ground its work in qualitative and quantitative data.
To provide clear and focused guidance for the Partnership’s data practices, the Eastside Pathways Backbone, is assembling a Taskforce to collaboratively build a Partnership-wide Data Strategy from the ground up to support the 2020-2023 Strategic Plan. The goal of the Taskforce is to build this partnership-wide data strategy, while also encouraging Partners to craft or refine a data strategy to directly support their organization’s work in and for the community they serve.
Before pulling the Taskforce together, the Backbone’s first step in this process was to collect data from the Partnership to establish a baseline of data capacity, culture and practices – providing clarity on the current landscape. These data have provided a truer sense of the range and depth of data practices of Partners within the Partnership.
With 65% of Partners responding and six of eight sectors represented (organizations with funding as their primary focus & community members were not represented), the results offered a look at the current data climate within the Partnership. To honor one of the Backbone’s core beliefs about data – data collected is data owed – below are notable findings from the survey:
- Majority (67%) of respondents reported that their organization has an “official or unofficial data strategy.”
A lack of time, funding, dedicated staff and data expertise were each listed as challenges to Partners’ baseline data capacity.
- Half (50%) of the respondents reported “too few data staff” as a challenge to fulfilling data requests, while more than half (60%) mentioned they “did not have enough time” to fill the requests they receive.
Data collection and its contextualization through stories and surveys is foundational to supporting the Eastside Pathways Strategic Plan. Eastside Pathways Partners employ student voice, interview data, and populations demographics to move through their work of achieving the whole population goals of the Strategic Plan.
- Around a quarter (26%) of the respondents reported using qualitative data “all the time in daily decision-making”. However, 13% reported their organization uses qualitative data “very well – fully informing all relevant policy and practice decisions.”
- Less than a quarter (23%) of the respondents reported using quantitative data “all the time in daily decision-making” and 15% stated their organization uses quantitative data “very well – fully informing all relevant policy and practice decisions.”
- Less than half (44%) of Partners responding were “somewhat confident” that the community they serve trusts what their organization will do with the data they collect.
The Eastside Pathways Data Strategy should also lead the Partnership in using data for continuous improvement to foster collaboration and alignment within each partner organization as much as it exists between partner organizations within the Partnership’s Collaborative Action Networks.
- When asked about internal metrics for success used in their organizations, the majority of responses mentioned “staff retention” (62%) and “trainings offered” (51%), while 8% mentioned “meetings between departments.”
Provided the space, Partners relayed their current challenges, successes and where they may provide and/or receive support from other Partners within and beyond their various sectors. The data collected from this survey will serve as a basis for ideas, supports and frameworks the Taskforce can take forward to develop the Data Strategy in support of the Partnership’s Strategic Plan.
Thank you to all partners who took the time to provide full and rich data upon which the Data Strategy Taskforce will be able to begin work on a Data Strategy.
If you or anyone in your organization is interested in becoming part of the Eastside Pathways Data Strategy Taskforce, please let Payton Richardson know by Friday, August 13.