Institute for Economic Empowerment

Drawing on input from the Employment Data Workgroup and discussions with the Institute and a wide range of Community Rehabilitation Programs (CRPs), Catoctin Consulting, LLC has drafted an Employment Database System Concept Document.

The Employment Database will provide employment data at the individual worker level, to track individuals and outcomes over time. This will result in:

• Greater understanding of the nonprofit agency (NPA) workforce and the results achieved by the AbilityOne Program
• Design and evaluation of Institute research projects targeted to the needs of the NPA community, including identification of NPAs to participate in particular demonstrations
• The ability for NPAs to document outcomes achieved, benchmark their results against other organizations, and identify areas where there might be best practices based on the quantitative data.

The data analysis found that the core of the employment data resides in the payroll and other systems of the NPAs, and that some of the agencies have a need for an improved case management system to support their operational needs.
 
The system concept is to work with the NPAs to plan interfaces to their systems that will extract the data, remove personally identifiable information, and send it to the Employment Database. NPAs will be able to access their own data and compare it with aggregate data of other NPAs.
 
The Employment Database will not contain social security numbers or other personally identifiable information. Individuals will be known only as anonymous research subjects, thus avoiding any concern over compromise of privacy or identity theft. 
 
The development and implementation of the system will begin in 2010 with the first group of NPAs and system interfaces. Additional NPAs and interfaces, and software at the NPA level will be phased in over time. Gathering data at the worker level from NPAs who have varied automation environments is a complex endeavor and will take time.

The document includes:

• The system concept for a system for the Institute, referred to as the Employment Research System (ERS), supported by an Employment Database (EDB)
  
• The system concept for a Submission System at the CRPs, to interface with payroll and other systems at CRPs and provide input to the EDB
• A concept for a new Case Management System for those CRPs desiring such a system, and an
• Implementation Strategy.

In addition, it includes appendices including a Data Dictionary describing the data to be collected.

The document is available for download and review:

Employment Database System Concept Document [Adobe Acrobat PDF - 400.05 KB].