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Date: March 14,2025
The Office of Head Start’s Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) Division hired 18F to help make sense of their disconnected data systems. They had 27+ disconnected systems with data spread across their central office and 12 regional offices. The goal was to enable data-informed decision making to improve their support for grantees.
Phase 1: Discovery
Phase 2: Prototyping and Experimentation
Phase 3: Assisted Acquisition, Product Coaching, and Launch
Head Start is a federal program started in 1965 that helps prepare low-income children to start school at age 5. Head Start helps these children and their families by offering educational, nutritional, health, social, and other services.
Each grantee is responsible for the quality of the program and health and safety of enrolled children. TTA supports program quality, and helps grantees prevent or correct deficiencies. TTA Specialists specialize in children’s health and safety; school readiness; family engagement; and program management and operations.
The OHS Division of Comprehensive Services and Training and Technical Assistance provides guidance to 12 regional offices staffed by federal employees. Each regional office has its own TTA contract. The contracts are staffed with specialists who go out and work directly with the grantees that run the programs.
There are several layers of messy human and technological systems between the central office, the regions, grantees, and the million kids they serve. TTA activity reporting suffered from a combination of disconnected systems, reliance on narrative and anecdotal information, and inconsistent terminology.
“We have a lot of trouble with measuring progress and rely heavily on anecdotes. But a long narrative is hard to analyze.”
“There is no data normalization, everyone says things in different ways.”
Each contractor had developed unique systems to manage their TTA process. Even when they are reporting with the same tool they are using different terminology to describe subject matter and progress. Through our research we’ve heard that these regional offices and specialists also struggle with having a clear picture of the progress that grantees are making and seeing the impact that their training is making over time.
To better serve children and families in Head Start programs, the TTA Data Platform will help staff at all levels make data-informed decisions that continuously improve Head Start services.
Improved collection and aggregation of data will support continuous improvement through more data-informed decision making.
Creating a cycle of continuous improvement: By improving data collection at each point in the process, we can create a more comprehensive view of activity. A longitudinal view of activities will enable stakeholders to recognize trends and track progress over time.
Starting with standardizing activity reporting: The MVP focused on standardizing the planning and reporting of activities across regional offices. By standardizing and streamlining how regions describe activities and objectives. The MVP laid the foundation for providing OHS with a better understanding of the intent, experience and effectiveness of their Training and Technical Assistance.
We kicked off the engagement by asking stakeholders what would a connected future look like? and what would need to happen to get us there?
To gain a better understanding of the problems and opportunities we interviewed stakeholders in OHS’s Regional and Central Office. We used the themes identified in the interviews for an in-person workshop to identify and explore potential opportunity areas.
Working in close collaboration with our partners and subject matter experts we created maps for key processes. These maps enabled us to connect opportunities identified in interviews with specific points for intervention.
With an initial area of focus identified we assembled stakeholders and subject matter experts in a hybrid virtual/in-person design studio workshop. This exercise helped make expectations tangible and created a sense of shared ownership among the key stakeholders.
Building on the design studio we tested a series of prototypes. We designed these experiments to challenge our riskiest assumptions and solidify direction for the MVP. Prototypes enabled us to gather feedback directly from the specialists that would be using the product.
Wireframe example: here.
The MVP focused on reporting from Regional TTA Specialists. Applying a solution for the specialists enabled OHS to reimagine the way Activity Report information was input and distributed. We guided our partners through roadmapping and product planning exercises to define the MVP and prepare for development.
New data flows provided users throughout the system a view of the data that is relevant to the needs of their role and location.
We also worked with our partners to prepare them for owning and managing an agile product development process, introducing them to best practices for agile development and continuous discovery.
Our team supported the vendor solicitation and worked to attract small agile digital services firms. We helped OHS identify and hire a development team. After the vendor was chosen, we onboarded the new team and continued to support the Hub through product coaching and technical support. By the time of launch Head Start had the internal capacity to oversee and approve every feature and code change.
To support ongoing experimentation we designed a process for OHS to refine and pilot new reports and data collections before incorporating into the TTA SmartHub. The TTA Data Platform helps staff at all levels make data-informed decisions that continuously improve Head Start services.
We continued our partnership with OHS leadership to envision a comprehensive API strategy that enabled data sharing to provide a more complete picture of what is happening throughout their systems. Prior to the launch of the TTA Smarthub data had been held in highly siloed platforms across the central and regional offices. We developed a technical proof-of-concept and a long-term roadmap to reach their vision of shared a data platform.
Now, 4 years after the launch of the TTA Smarthub, much of their vision has been realized. The Hub is now connected to OHS’s monitoring, grants management, and professional development systems. This gives OHS a more complete view of how they are supporting their grantees and how those grantees are serving children and families.
Our partners have said that the Hub continues to serve as a model for a contemporary way of operating and that 18F’s approach to building their internal capacity remains the foundation of the product’s success.
