The Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP) in the Office of Workforce Investment at the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (DOL ETA) provides subsidized, service-based training for low-income adults 55 or older who are unemployed and have poor employment prospects. The program helps bridge these workers into long-term, unsubsidized unemployment.

DOL wanted to implement a program-wide performance measurement system and benchmarks for grantees to monitor SCSEP’s effectiveness. Performance measures included hours of community service, participants’ employment and retention rates and average earnings, service level to participants, and service to seniors most in need. OWI also wanted to standardize the way grantees collected and validated data. Prior to this initiative, grantees used their own systems and approaches to calculate performance measures and collect and validate data. Without common data and measurement standards it was impossible for OWI to aggregate data across grantees or objectively compare grantee performance.

To support the new requirements, Mathematica’s Data Management and Analytics (DMA) department helped design, develop, and support a case management, reporting, and performance measurement system—the SCSEP Performance and Results Quarterly Progress Report (SPARQ) system.

Read the case study.