Leveraging Data Management and Analytics Expertise to Support the Department of Education

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From 2020 to 2023, AIR supported the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED’s) Office of the Chief Data Officer (OCDO) manage and use data effectively across the agency. OCDO’s role is to treat data as a strategic asset to improve decision-making in education. Its work includes:

• Data analytics: Using methods such as machine learning, AI, statistical modeling, and experimental designs to analyze data.
   
• Data use: Managing the Open Data Plan, developing data products, and conducting data trainings to ensure that ED staff, other federal agencies, and members of the public can easily find and make sense of ED data.
   
• Data governance: Setting policies for protecting, sharing, and ensuring the quality of data.
   

Our Impact

AIR has a long history of working with federal clients. With our strong technical expertise, flexibility and adaptability to changes, and deep commitment to quality, we helped OCDO carry out its work supporting the governance, analysis, and use of ED data. 

AIR's contributions included:

• Surveying ED staff. We designed and administered an annual internal survey, which helped ED understand the competency levels of its staff and identify areas where staff might need more support. We supported the full survey process, including planning and developing the survey instrument, conducting cognitive interviews, programming and administering the survey, preparing the data files, and presenting the results in a Power BI dashboard to allow cross-year comparisons.
   
• Auditing information collections. AIR reviewed ED’s information collection requests to reduce redundancy and improve efficiency. This included completing an inventory and analysis of the requests across ED and helping to prepare a request for information to solicit public input regarding ways to reduce the burden of ED information collections.
   
• Reviewing data quality. Our experts assessed the accuracy and consistency of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) data to improve the quality of the final datasets.
   
• Analyzing and sharing data. We cleaned data and prepared summary data tables and reports, such as a performance measure analysis using Title I, Part A data, to guide program decisions and budget planning.
   
• Training in data science. Experts from AIR helped create and deliver a staff training program in emerging data science skills and developed a Data Quality Playbook with practical guidance.
   
• Web scraping for analysis. Our team automated the extraction of data from Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund grantees to create a final report for OCDO and the Office of Postsecondary Education.