- Overview
- By Industry
- Banking
- Business and Professional Markets
- Capital Markets
- Commercial Real Estate
- Federal/Public Sector
- Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals
- Independent Software Vendors
- Insurance
- Lending
- Manufacturing
- Media/Entertainment
- Transportation/Distribution/Logistics
- Utilities/Telco
- By Area of Expertise
- Business Intelligence
- Custom .NET Application Development
- Enterprise Application Integration
- Workflow and Collaboration
Case Studies
Inspection Tool Dramatically Improves Data Collection Capabilities for U.S. Congress Head Start Program
Project at a Glance |
|---|
RDA developed an inspection tool for the Head Start Program which easily captures data nationwide on program benefactors, streamlining the grant review process and monitoring program compliance. |
About Our Client
RDA's client is a premier national healthcare and human services consulting firm that provides training to the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) review team members, consolidates review data from the regions and branches served by the Head Start Program, and prepares the annual report that is submitted to the U.S. Congress.
Background
The Head Start Program provides grants to local public and private nonprofit and for-profit agencies to provide comprehensive child development services to economically disadvantaged children and families, with a special focus on helping children develop the early literacy and numeracy skills they need to be successful in school. Each year the U.S. Congress appropriates money for the Head Start Program. The money is funneled through the Administration for Children and Families to program grantees who use the money to fund Head Start programs. ACF is responsible to review the grantees' performance and provides a consolidated report to Congress.
Solution Detail
RDA and our client were asked to create a review system based on the existing application that would be easy for the reviewers to use and would capture review data in a manner that supports the review process and the reporting needs of the Head Start Bureau, Administration for Children and Families, and the U.S. Congress.
RDA developed an automated user-defined inspection tool that allows reviewers to collect, record and compile data in real-time. The tool is based on RDA's Independent Mobile Framework (IMF). Developed for field data collection projects, IMF utilizes a common set of analysis and design patterns for survey or inspection intensive data collection systems. IMF consists of a central engine and set of reusable components that allows the rapid implementation of such systems, with built in functionality for data collection, real-time synching of data between multiple users, multiple platform support, a host of available data transmission paths, and built in security, reliability, and robustness.
Challenges
The system previously used by the Head Start Bureau to perform and monitor grantee reviews had a number of deficiencies that significantly limited (and for some tasks completely prevented) its ability to effectively support critical business requirements and needs:- The system did not support central data repository where review data (from all regional and branch offices) was consolidated. This prevented the system from being used to monitor and track grantee status on the regional and nationwide levels as well as to support various ad-hoc information requests.
- The system did not properly enforce data integrity. For example, some of the standards were applicable only to the specific grantees (for-profit, non-profit, etc.), but the system allowed the user to set citation for any standard regardless of the type of the grantee. This degraded reliability and accuracy of the data collected during the reviews and in some cases required "manual data clean up" efforts.
- The system was not end-user oriented. The User Interface was not closely aligned with the review instruments. Also, the system did not support seamless information sharing between review team members as well as between regional offices and the Head Start Bureau.
- The system did not properly reflect the underlying business model. For example, it only supported a "one-to-one" relationship between compliance standard and deficiency when in reality deficiency may be associated with a number of compliance standards. This prevented the system from being effectively used by the regional offices to establish and properly record/document the status of the grantee after the review was performed.
- The system did not support integrated data management. Some important business tasks (e.g. cover letter generation) were not supported by the system.
- The system did not support capability to track changes made to the review data during various stages of its lifecycle. This prevented the system from being used as a tool to review and monitor the quality of the reviews.
Benefits
The new system supports the capture and management of field data in a manner consistent with Head Start Bureau guidelines and policies:- Maintains direct link between identified standard citations and the reviewer's comments.
- Associates standards with appropriate grantee and review types only allowing the user to cite the standards that are appropriate for the current grantee and review type.
- Supports automatic cover letter generation based on the data captured during the review and requires minimal manual intervention.
- Supports the functionality to track the status of grantee(s) in the particular region, state or nationwide.
- Supports the functionality to track grantee noncompliance and monitor the correction process in particular region, state or nationwide.
- Supports functionality to distribute electronic copies of the grantee review report.
In addition, the system provides a central location for all review data. It supports ad-hoc queries and a rich reporting functionality. The system eliminates the need to manually consolidate and clean up the review data prior to preparation of the Annual Monitoring Report. It is also integrated with the Head Start Enterprise System.
Additional benefits of the system include the following:- Enforces data integrity during all phases of the review life cycle.
- Supports tracking of all changes made to the review data during its life cycle.
- End-user oriented
- Supports seamless data sharing between review team members as well as between the federal Head Start Bureau and its Regional Offices and Head Start Bureau Branches.
- Synchronizes with primary website
Technically Speaking
In addition to RDA's IMF technology, the solution developed by RDA and our client leverages .NET and SQL Server for the client and Java and Oracle for the server. Interaction between the client and server is based on a web services communication layer.
