Report on Use and Effectiveness of Data Collection

Employment and Training Administration Report on the Status of the OMB Form 9134 and Instructions

Overview:

On May 14, 2008, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approved Form 9134 and its related instructions (control number 1205-0465), which is used by High Growth Job Training Initiative (HGJTI) and Community Based Job Training (CBJT) grantees for their quarterly performance reports. According to the terms of clearance in the OMB notice of action for the form and instructions, 18 months from the date of approval of the form the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) will provide an update on how it has used the data that is collected, and the effectiveness of combining administrative data with grantee-submitted data to yield outcomes data. The following provides an update on these two items.

Update:

How it has used the data that is collected: ETA uses the data collected from HGJTI and CBJT grantees through Form 9134 and its instructions to determine if grantees are meeting their agreed–upon performance goals, to capture qualitative information on the status of grants, and to help track the overall performance of the programs. Grantees have performance goals according to their statements of work in outcome categories such as the number of individuals that begin education/training, complete education/training, and enter employment. Each quarter grantees use the 9134 to provide ETA with updates on their performance in these key outcome categories. ETA then uses these reports to determine if grantees are on track or have met their performance goals. When grantees are struggling to meet their goals and thus reporting low numbers in key categories, ETA staff can provide technical assistance to grantees to help them improve their performance and meet their outcome goals. Further, grantees sometimes ask for extensions to their agreed upon periods of performance, and the information on their outcomes submitted through the Form 9134 helps ETA determine if, based on the performance of the grant to date, it is in the best interest of the government to extend the grant’s period of performance.

The narrative information that grantees provide to ETA also results in important qualitative information on the status of individual grants. Each grantee provides ETA with narrative on topics such as the partnerships they are developing and challenges they are experiencing. This information helps ETA determine the status of grantees’ specific programmatic activities and specific challenges they are experiencing, and also helps ETA to tailor technical assistance activities to the needs of grantees to help ensure their success.

Finally, ETA uses the data that is collected to track the overall performance of the two programs. ETA has established specific program year goals for each program in key outcome categories such as the total number of individuals that will begin education/ training. The data submitted by the grantees through Form 9134 provides ETA with the necessary data for each of these outcome categories, and enable it to determine whether the two programs are achieving the performance projections for these areas.

The effectiveness of combining administrative data with grantee-submitted data to yield outcomes data: The approach that ETA has taken to combine administrative data with data submitted by the grantee to yield outcomes data has been very effective. As noted above, grantees submit data to ETA in key outcome categories such as number of individuals that begin and complete education/training activities, and this provides critical real-time aggregate information on the performance of the grants on a quarterly basis. However, grants are also required to submit Social Security Numbers to ETA for specific program participants. Through a data sharing agreement with the State of Kansas, ETA submits these data for matching against wage records in order to calculate grantee performance on the Common Measures. The outcome information is provided back in aggregate by grantee, providing good information for long-term outcome measures such as retention and average earnings that aren’t captured through the real-time aggregate information submitted by the grantees each quarter. In short, this combination of short-term and long-term outcomes data enables ETA to have a strong, comprehensive understanding of the performance of these two programs.