SCDEW receives grant for data integration

The ability to share data within state agencies is being made possible by a recent grant to the South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce  (SCDEW) from the U.S. Department of Labor.  A three-year, $289,000 grant will allow education, workforce, and other agency data bases to integrate programs across state government.

SCDEW spokesman Clark Newsom says this will ultimately provide better services to their customers.

Education, Workforce, and other agency data will be linked allowing us to analyze a relationship between education and employment services among lots of different populations across the state.

Newsom says it’s important that the agency continue to work with inter-agency and data sharing, under legislation that created the S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce:

We partner in this with the SC Dept of Education, the Dept of Social Services, Vocational Rehabilitation and the SC Office of Research and Statistics, who we’ll be continuing to work very closely on all these things.

Newsom says the goal is to develop and improve databases that will better link employment and education for long-term success of the workers. 

We’re still waiting on some final instructions from the Department of Labor on how to move forward with this, but we certainly hope to within the next year, be able to provide the analysis of this data and start in an on-going basis of sharing with our counterparts.

South Carolina was one of 13 states awarded grants by the Department of Labor.