Section 20 ILCS 65/20-5 - Findings The General Assembly finds the following:
(1) The State of Illinois spends billions of dollars annually on grants and programs to ensure that all Illinoisans have the economic, health and safety, educational, and other opportunities to be successful, but it is still insufficient to serve all the needs of all Illinoisans.(2) To be good fiscal stewards of State funds, it is necessary to ensure that the limited State funding is spent on the right services, at the right time, in the right dosages, to the right individuals, and in the most equitable manner.(3) Historical equity gaps exist in the administration of programs across the State and understanding where these exist is necessary for adjusting program scopes and ensuring that gaps can be found and rectified quickly.(4) Different subpopulations of individuals may have different needs and may experience different outcomes from similar programs.(5) Measuring average outcomes across an entire population is insufficient to understand the equity impacts of a program on specific subpopulations.(6) Silos in information sharing exist across agencies and that measuring the outcomes and impacts of programs requires multiple agencies to share data.(7) There is no existing mechanism for agencies to ensure they are collecting information on programs that can be easily matched to other agencies to understand program effectiveness, as well as equity and access gaps that may exist.(8) The establishment of a system of data governance and improved analytic capability is critical to support equitable provision of services and the evaluation of equitable outcomes for the citizens of Illinois.(9) Sound data collection, reporting, and analysis is necessary to ensure that practice and policy decisions and outcomes are driven by a culture of data use and actionable information that supports equity and engages stakeholders.(10) Data governance and the classification of data is a critical component of improving the security and privacy of data.(11) The P-20 Longitudinal Education Data System Act, enacted by Public Act 96-107, was created in 2009 to develop the capacity to match data across agencies and provide for improved data analytics across education agencies.(12) The P-20 Longitudinal Education Data System has expanded to include the incorporation of human services, workforce, and education agencies.(13) The implementation of the P-20 Longitudinal Education Data System has allowed the State to improve its ability to manage and to bring together data across agencies.(14) Merging data across agencies has highlighted the degree to which there are different approaches to capturing similar data across agencies, including how race and ethnicity data are captured.(15) The State of Illinois needs to establish common processes and procedures for all of the following:(B) Managing data requests.(E) Matching data across agencies.(F) Developing research and analytic agendas.(G) Reporting on program participation disaggregated by race and ethnicity.(H) Evaluating equitable outcomes for underserved populations in Illinois.(I) Defining common roles for data management across agencies.Added by P.A. 101-0654,§ 20-5, eff. 3/8/2021.