Data Usage — United Way Salt Lake
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Data Use in Promise Partnerships

 

A Resource for Parents, Students, and Community Members

The Role of Data: Our Guiding Principles

United Way of Salt Lake and our partners recognize that our most complex social problems – including the opportunity gap, poverty, and healthcare access – cannot be solved by any one organization on its own. It is only by coming together with a rigorous collective impact approach that we can change the odds for all children and families. This requires that we:

  • •  Share responsibility for giving all children a quality education, ensuring access to quality healthcare, and ending the cycle of poverty
  • •  Focus on the same outcomes
  • •  Create shared plans for achieving those outcomes
  • •  Communicate regularly and authentically among ourselves

We are aligning the efforts of community organizations, healthcare providers, government agencies, school districts, philanthropic groups, and businesses (“Promise Partners”) to help communities achieve their goals, and this collaboration requires us to share aggregate information. Sharing aggregate information enables Promise Partners to convene around shared priorities, set plans of action, personalize learning experiences, learn what is working and what needs improvement, communicate about successes and challenges with students and families, and make decisions.

A very small subset of these 150 Promise Partners ("trained service providers") are working directly with students on educational outcomes. Individual level data might be shared among this small group of service providers if (1) a parent or guardian has given written consent to share information; (2) the service provider has signed data confidentiality agreements and received specific training; (3) the service provider works in the student's community; and (4) the service provider "needs to know" the information, because knowing it will help them support an individual's success.

 

The following principles guide how we use and share data:

 

Data as a flashlight: Promise Partners believe that safe, effective data use – combined with expertise from parents and guardians, community organizations and students – empowers students and helps them to start kindergarten ready to learn, excel in school, graduate, complete a degree or credential that leads to financial stability, and live healthy lives.

Shared accountability: We believe everyone in the community is accountable for student success. Students, parents and guardians, school officials, community organizations, government organizations, businesses, and policymakers are all responsible for how every child is doing right now and for achieving better, more equitable results in the future. We believe that the trained service providers working day-to-day with our children should work together, agree upon shared measures of success, use aggregate data related to those measures to inform their work, and – in some cases – use individual-level information to support specific individuals. We believe that data is never evidence of the success or failure of any one program, organization, sector, or group of people.

Ongoing data capability-building: We believe students do best when they are surrounded by professionals in schools and in the community, who have ongoing training and support to use information to help students succeed. UWSL helps to provide such support through a variety of resources.

Privacy: We take privacy seriously and invest significant resources in protecting the individual-level information with which we have been entrusted. Individual-level information is ONLY shared with a small subset of Promise Partners who work directly with students if (1) a parent or guardian has given written consent to share information; (2) the trained service provider has signed data confidentiality agreements and received specific training; (3) the trained service provider works in the student’s community; and (4) the trained service provider "needs to know" the information, because knowing it will help them support an individual’s success.

Transparency: We believe in being clear about what student information we are collecting, who it is being shared with and for what reasons, and how it is being protected. See below for information on what information we are collecting, who is seeing it, and for what reasons.

Helping Students through Data Sharing:

We developed this webpage to make it clear what information we are collecting, who is seeing it, and for what reasons.

Protecting data from breaches and unauthorized use:

We only collect student data when parents or guardians give written consent, the information is used to support student academic success, and the information is kept secure. Here are just some of the policies and practices we have in place to protect this information. Please see our Collective Impact Contract, Data Privacy Terms and Conditions, and Data Sharing Terms and Conditions for a complete list.

Regulation and practices

 

Who should I contact if I have questions?

We review questions and input regularly and thoughtfully. Please email United Way of Salt Lake at helpdesk@uw.org.

Useful Documents

 

XMission