A National Imperative: Joining Forces to Strengthen Human Services in America (Jan 2018)

of CBO technology-specific investment funds; the creation of early-stage accelerators and incubators focused on human services CBOs; and changes in contracting rules that would create more flexibility in allocating contract revenues to technology expenses. Funders must also be willing to allow human services CBOs to “fail forward”. Innovative ideas and approaches may not – in fact, are unlikely to – succeed immediately. Trials may fail but yield learnings that make the next trial better; multiple iterations may be required before a successful innovation emerges. Human services CBOs need room for error and failure in order to plan for and execute the most impactful programs and services for individuals, children, and families. By embracing failure as an integral part of the continuous improvement and innovation process, funders can motivate organizations to take more risks to develop better services and programs for their clients and build the capacity for innovation. Funders must have the patience to fund the innovation cycle through these iterations, without restricting funding at the first sign of failure. As noted previously, this patience must also be balanced with the commitment to evidence and proven outcomes-based programs. Government agencies can facilitate innovation by sharing client data with human services CBOs. Today, CBOs interested in systematically analyzing population needs and human services outcomes frequently face significant difficulties in accessing data held by government agencies. To help CBOs address this roadblock, we recommend that government agencies and policy-makers consider investment in data anonymization programs, so that client data can be shared without violating privacy laws, and creation of single-point-of-access portals to provide CBOs low-cost access to the agencies’ data stores. Regulators and legislators can also take actions to make data sharing easier and more likely to happen by modernizing archaic laws and regulations. We recommend that regulators and legislators start by engaging with human services CBOs and government agencies together to understand their data sharing needs, help them recognize where data sharing and privacy concerns are legitimate, and then refine rules and regulations as appropriate – balancing needs for client confidentiality with the public interest in accessing valuable data to design more effective and efficient human services approaches. Each of these constituency groups has independently studied regulation and developed their own strong opinions about the efficacy of specific regulations; our North Star call is for these groups to now collaborate and work together to develop a shared view. Fifth, we recommend that industry associations play a role in sharing knowledge, identifying best practices, and developing methods to take best practices to scale across the sector and into the realm of policy. As many of the case studies included in this report demonstrate, innovation is already happening in the human services sector, but it is often happening in pockets and limited to specific locales. Sharing ideas and converting them into actionable solutions that can be widely implemented is key to ensuring that CBOs and the human services ecosystem realize the fruits of innovation.

Lastly, universities and think tanks should also explore ways to support and facilitate human services innovation. Ideas include creation of standard data models to facilitate

60 |   A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE