TANF Data Innovation (TDI) has the following planned key components:

• National learning collaborative of TANF agencies and their partners: Training and technical assistance (TTA) to states on using TANF data for improving performance and building evidence. The TTA will include a range of options to help states progress along a TANF data innovation pathway.

• Increased level of readiness to use data and analytics: Informed by a state needs assessment survey and input from key stakeholders, the goal of the multi-year TTA effort is to meet states where they are and enable a new level of readiness to use data and analytics.

• TDI Learning Community website: This website will provide the key vehicle for facilitating an interactive learning community among state agencies and staff, including trainings, hands-on workshops, webinars, one-on-one technical consultations, and convenings. It will also serve as a repository of easily accessible tools, templates, coding, and case studies to help agency staff using data to inform program administration and policies.

• Wide range of TTA: TDI will offer trainings, for example, to create effective dashboards and data visualizations of program performance, to support states’ building their capacity to link multiple data sources to understand the changing dynamics of welfare caseloads, to identify the pathways out of welfare, to predict who may best benefit from specific social programs, and to provide leadership training in the rapidly expanding data-rich environment.

• Pilots for incubating and executing ideas: TDI will provide an opportunity for a subset of TANF agencies to become pilot sites, further accelerating learning and implementing specific projects relevant to participating agencies. Selected pilot sites will form a hands-on learning community, receive more intensive TTA, and be provided with resources to support their efforts. Lessons learned from these pilot efforts will advance practice in the field as a whole.

• Payment integrity practices and lessons: The TDI team will assess states’ current uses of integrated data to improve the integrity and accuracy of TANF payments and will provide best practices and tools for improving efficiency and effectiveness of state payment integrity procedures.

• Capacity building at the federal level: TDI will support the building of TANF data capacity at the federal level.

• Successes and challenges: TDI will disseminate the successes TANF agencies achieved and the challenges they faced and overcame as part of the TDI Learning Collaborative through the website, case studies, and other vehicles.