In fiscal year 2020, the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) entered into an interagency agreement with 18F within the Technology Transformation Service (TTS) to provide assisted acquisition services for the procurement of software development services in support of the TANF Data Reporting System (TDRS). OFA is seeking a contractor to assist with TDRS improvements and enhancements. 18F will award and administer the resultant contract on behalf of OFA. 18F will provide procurement and technical support to OFA for the life of the contract.
The General Services Administration's (GSA) Technology Transformation Services (TTS) applies modern methodologies and technologies to improve the public's experience with Government by helping agencies make their services more accessible, efficient, effective, and by providing services that exemplify these values.
The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) has entered into an interagency agreement (IAA) with TTS for assisted acquisition services. TTS will acquire the services requested in this solicitation on behalf of OFA and administer the contract in post award.
The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) administers the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Since 1996, the TANF program has served as one of the nation's primary economic security and stability programs for low-income families with children. TANF is a block grant that provides $16.6 billion annually to states, territories, the District of Columbia, and federally-recognized Indian tribes. These TANF jurisdictions use federal TANF funds to provide income support as well as a wide range of services to vulnerable families with minor children.
As part of oversight and administration of the TANF Program, OFA operates the TANF Data Reporting System (TDRS).
OFA's state, territory, and tribal TANF grantees submit data to TDRS that they are legislatively-mandated to report. OFA then aggregates the data and uses it for descriptive analyses and program accountability, most notably through the work participation rate calculations.
The existing system was developed in the late 1990s using late 80s technology, possibly with some updates rolled in later on.
The states, territories, the District of Columbia, and federally-recognized Indian tribes generally input their data in one of several ways:
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using a legacy tool (ftanf.exe) that exports files in a special text format;
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using their own software to export the data in this format; or
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emailing their data to an OFA staff member to be input for them.
The data is then uploaded using SFTP into a system which then periodically attempts to process the data and import it into the database which the OFA staff uses for analysis. OFA staff accesses the data via direct read-only SQL queries using tools like python, Jupyter Notebooks, and SAS.
The database currently is around 50GB in size, though most of it is historical data which will most likely not need to be migrated. Most of the tables seem to contain between 700,000 to 1,300,000 rows and there appears to be seven or so tables where most of the data is stored. These tables are renamed periodically so there is a historical record. Access to this data is extremely limited, both because the data is sensitive (contains personally identifiable information or PII) and because managing access to these aging systems is difficult.
The current TDRS application was developed in the late 1990s and doesn't take advantage of modern technology or best practices. The system is inflexible to changing requirements, not automated, has no real user interface, doesn't validate data effectively, and doesn't provide OFA with full ownership of the data housed within it. This puts a disproportionate amount of burden on all users of the system -- both federal staff and the state, local, and tribal grantees -- and has led to a painful user experience and often untimely or inaccurate data.
The data TDRS collects and stores from states, tribes, and territories is critical to OFA's responsibility to report on the TANF program. The data provides information about how states are meeting their participant outreach targets, as well as demographic information about low-income families.
High quality data leads to informed decision-making, and the TANF program relies on this information to make policy recommendations. Additionally, states and territories face penalties of up to four percent of their total grant award each quarter if TDRS data is not timely, complete, and accurate.
Issues with the current system prevent states from meeting their goals and prevent the federal team from being able to accurately gauge TANF's impact. Dealing with the deficiencies of the aging software is taking up significant amounts of the OFA staff time.
OFA will build a new, secure, web-based data system to improve the federal reporting experience for states, tribes, territories, and federal staff. A system that lets states, tribes, territories directly upload and view the status of their data will reduce the burden on all users, improve data quality, and ultimately help low-income families.