HyeSook Chung

Executive Director
DC Action for Children
 
 

DC Action for Children is small nonprofit in Washington, DC focused on improving child well-being through policy and local systems change. We embarked on a journey three years ago to rethink how a child-centered advocacy organization can use data to influence policy and decision-making. In a crowded political environment where large national think tanks and government-funded services providers try to advocate for children and families with limited local knowledge or huge self-interests, we needed to show policymakers that our city has an independent voice for children.

As the home of DC KIDS COUNT, our bottom-line is to improve the outcomes for children in DC. In the 25 years that KIDS COUNT has been providing data analysis of child well being in DC, very little has changed. I knew business as usual wasn’t going to have a positive impact on children. In my view, it was data that was going to be our best bet as we tried to reinvent the way we work with policy-makers.

For us, capacity was a big issue, and our innovative partnership with DataKind served as our tipping point (yes, I do love Malcom Gladwell). We had the data sets and we knew DC political and programmatic landscape. I wish we could afford to hire staff like Google or Amazon, but instead we have an army of data scientists via DataKind who provide the analytic work we could never afford to access. DataKind equalizes the playing field in the competitive world of big data analytics for a small but fierce nonprofit like ours. Recently, our partnership with DataKind was featured at the IBM Insight conference, which is simply incredible.

You may ask, why would we (a small but mighty team), engage in this relatively new movement of big data analytics? So much of the data analysis used in the social space looks at trends and tells us patterns in the past tense, but we want to do what the for-profit business sector is doing – begin to change practices of consumers.

If children do not achieve proficiency by the end of 3rd grade, they are significantly less likely to graduate from high school.[1] In 2011, 42% of DC 3rd graders were proficient in reading. Despite new DC policies, data analyzed by DC KIDS COUNT shows that grade-level proficiency among 3rd grade students is unacceptably low, and that there has been no statistically significant progress in the past five years.

Our consumers vary – some are decision-makers who allocate resources to programs or interventions deemed worthy. Others are direct service providers who may want to use consumer practice or demographic information to modify service delivery. As child advocates, we know that their conditions are not improving. We know that they didn’t use data to make their decisions, because the lives of children haven’t been improving.

Growth and development in early childhood play a critical role in shaping our young children for tomorrow. In order to ensure that the next generation is able to succeed, all children need access to resources and support that help them thrive. Big data analytics allows us to identify how and where resources and child well-being differ in our city.

You may think it’s a simple task, but as Derrick Harris, technology journalist for Gigaom, wrote in his August 2014 blog, Why big data has some big problems when it comes to public policy, the fear of the unknown and politics get in the way of using big data analytics in the public policy sector. But as the leader of this incredible team (past and present), I felt we had nothing to lose and everything to gain by jumping into the big data analytics movement. There’s an urgency in our work –1 in 4 DC children live in poverty.

Our partner at DataKind UK, Duncan Ross, provided an in-depth review of big data entitled, Big Data and Social Organisations, in which he defines big data in terms of three V’s: Volume, Velocity, and Variety. Volume describes the amount of data that has become available, Velocity describes the rate of change of data, and Variety describes the range of data types that are now capable of analysis.

Big data analytics refers to the process of collecting, organizing and analyzing these large data sets (“big data“) to discover patterns. Not only will big data analytics help us better understand patterns contained within the data, but it can also help identify the indicators that is most important to future business practice.

The Benefits of Big Data Analytics for DC KIDS COUNT
Businesses like Amazon and Netflix increasingly focus on finding “actionable” insights from their data. For them, big data analytics answer specific business practice questions and with the right analytics platforms, they can increase efficiency or even improve operations and sales. As an Amazon shopper, I appreciate the “individualized” pop-up ads to help flag future purchases. Check out Data Tools 2.0

I love the potential of big data analytics for DC KIDS COUNT; it opens up the opportunity to improve and reshape our thinking and decision making process to better align services with the needs of DC children in the same way Amazon or Netflix practices.

Historically, our data analysis looked at more traditional indicators such as program enrollment or child welfare cases closed, but now we think we can use our big data on DC children to see patterns within our data sets to help guide our city administrators to make more informed decisions. For example, if we are trying to prevent future child abuse cases, we can see patterns that analyze family and child data in specific neighborhoods. We can use predictive analysis practiced in the for-profit business to help us serve DC children more efficiently and effectively.

Our next steps
Big data analytics is the way we can begin to transform and grow better social policies to improve the lives of DC children. We want to change our status quo and start to overhaul our practices to actually improve lives of children to pull them out of poverty!

Our big takeaway from our feature at the IBM Insight conference — we have successfully tapped into the brave world of big data analytics. We have the culture needed to tackle big data analytics, we have the capacity (via DataKind) and now we have to create a few user stories and case studies (stay tuned for other future blogs featuring a few of our partnerships).

Big data analytics is transformative and changes the way we engage in our priorities and business practices. So now we have to test our assumptions. Will decision-making be informed by new patterns not seen previously? Can we encourage this by creating a platform that allows them to access real-time data to adjust practices and quickly inform their decisions? Would DC executive and legislative staff use it? These are all questions that we are exploring today.

The impact of that kind of change could be far-reaching and unpredictable. We have no idea where this venture into the unknown will take us. Will the for-profit principles hold true for the social sector, and if so, are the results any better than what’s currently possible? I committed to this movement with the hope that if we used big data analytics – we could revolutionize the way they we do business on behalf of DC children.

HyeSook was a speaker at the 2014 Collaborative. Read about her experience:

• Mapping the Education Outcomes and Well-Being of Children in the District of Columbia
• How One Small Organization is Using Big Data Analysis to Uproot Child Policy in DC

Photo Credit: Flickr user Kris Krug
[1] Hernandez, D.J. (2011). Double Jeopardy: How Third Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation. Annie E. Casey Foundation.