Article by Erika Tyagi et al: “In this post, we offer a behind-the-scenes look at our approach and the lessons we’ve learned, with the aim of helping other organizations and leaders build the foundations for data systems that unlock insights and improve outcomes.
- Start privacy and governance conversations early
Successfully managing risks requires treating privacy, governance, and disclosure protections as first-order design choices—not afterthoughts. Starting these conversations early helps align goals, clarify decisionmaking authority, and design processes that scale, especially in multiagency or cross-jurisdictional projects with significant legal and operational constraints. These early conversations can enable trust and efficiency down the line.
Urban’s work with the DC Education Research Collaborative demonstrates the importance of early governance. From the start, the collaborative was structured as a research-practice partnership, bringing together education agencies, researchers, and community stakeholders through formal governance bodies. These included a cross-sector advisory committee and a research council of academic and analytic partners.
Governance and disclosure processes were established early and collaboratively, allowing agencies to securely and easily share data once with the collaborative, where a central team generates consistent, research-ready datasets that are then used by researchers across different organizations and teams. This approach, combined with regular meetings and feedback loops, reduces administrative burden, provides predictable data access, and keeps use aligned with the collaborative’s shared values.
- Design for change
Data systems must evolve as new data sources, users, and technologies emerge. The Education Data Portal, launched in 2018, was intentionally designed with this flexibility in mind. It uses an API-first, metadata-rich design to harmonize datasets over time and across sources and pairs those data with detailed, programmatically accessible documentation. This approach allows us to add new data sources and build downstream tools, such as programming libraries and interactive dashboards, without requiring changes to the underlying system.
Because the portal’s core architecture is modular and scalable, it’s remained resilient while expanding to support new use cases and audiences. Today, it’s evolving in response to federal policy shifts and advances in artificial intelligence. We are incorporating nonfederal data from states, for example, and integrating with initiatives like Google’s Data Commons to broaden access and usability. While Urban could not have anticipated these specific developments in 2018, the decision to prioritize an API-first design and curated metadata has enabled us to adapt the portal to new datasets, users, and tools without reengineering its foundation…(More)”.
