Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP)
WSIPP helps the Washington state legislature and other Washington state policy makers make evidence-based policy decisions by conducting public policy research and carrying out cost-benefit analyses of the state’s programs and policies.
Location: Olympia, Washington
Summary
House legislation in 1983 created WSIPP in order to improve the ability of the Washington state legislature and other Washington state policymakers to make sound, evidence-based policy decisions. It was established after the state legislature recognized the need for effective policy evaluation but found that there was a lack of expertise within government to address it. The House of Representatives’ resolution directed the Council for Postsecondary Education to study “the potential of focusing higher education resources in assisting state government” to leverage the expertise present in the state’s higher education institution, which was not readily available to state policymakers and administrators, to improve policymaking.¹
WSIPP only serves the public sector at present — providing in-house nonpartisan research services at the direction of the legislature or the Board of Directors. These services may include evaluation of social sector programs funded by the state using administrative data but requests cannot be commissioned by charities themselves.
Over time, the mission of the institute has evolved from its original aim of bridging the gap between policymakers and academics to focusing on “making informed judgements about important, long-term issues facing Washington State.” Today, the institute is funded on a project basis with a workforce of 20 full-time employees who conduct policy research projects as well as perform cost-benefit analyses to help the state legislature make evidence-based decisions.
The institute is almost completely funded² by the state on a fee for project basis and works in diverse fields as mandated by the legislature. The state legislature assigns projects to WSIPP in order to evaluate if a certain program is likely to be effective in the state. These projects include issue areas like criminal justice reform, public health and education reforms and involve measuring effectiveness of existing programs and policies or conducting cost-benefit analyses for new ones. According³ to WSIPP’s Director, Bethanne Barnes, WSIPP uses administrative data for almost everything they do. As a state agency, with projects primarily chosen and funded by the state legislature, they have access to administrative data sets regardless of where they are housed and have used them for over 500 projects.
Sample Project: In early 2017, the Washington State legislature directed WSIPP to “examine the effectiveness of reentry programs through a systematic review of the research literature”. Using the WSIPP’s standardized set of procedures to estimate a program’s average effectiveness at achieving a desired outcome, the institute was able to find that 53% of programs which aimed to improve outcomes for people who return to the community after incarceration showed statistically significant reductions in recidivism. They also found that 64% of programs had benefits that outweighed the costs. These findings, along with supporting evidence such as outcomes (monetized as well as non-monetized) from the 59 programs they assessed and a description of the methodology were described in detail in a report that was presented to the state legislature to help them review the effectiveness of these government-funded programs. The analysis was carried out using WSIPP’s criminal history database, which was developed to conduct criminal justice research at the request of the legislature and contains data from the Administrative Office of the Courts and the Department of Corrections. The report is publicly accessible and is available on the WSIPP website.
Website: http://wsipp.wa.gov/
Sector: Education, criminal justice, social services, legislation, workforce development.
Target Audience: The Washington State Legislature and other Washington State policymakers and administrators.
Services offered: WSIPP conducts meta-analyses, reviews the high-quality available literature and develops rigorous summaries of the research they conduct. WSIPP also does cost-benefit analysis and outcome evaluation to help the state legislature make evidence-based decisions and to identify policies that work and those that do not. The projects are assigned to WSIPP by the state legislature and the institute’s board on the basis of certain substantive and institutional criteria.⁴
Data Sources: Primarily state government administrative data and data from federal agencies and nonprofits, depending on the requirements of the project.
Who Houses the Data: Data are typically housed by individual government agencies and only queried by WSIPP. WSIPP will house some data, specifically for juvenile justice, but is still not the data owner and requires approval of various data owners to, in some rare cases, provide access to any contracted partners.
Addressing Data Quality Issues: Since there is variability in the quality of the data from different agencies, WSIPP employees often have to clean the data they receive. However, according to Bethanne Barnes, if there are data quality issues, the researchers report the issue back to the data owners.
Addressing Data Governance and Oversight Mechanisms: Since WSIPP is a state agency, they are able to access personally identifiable administrative data fairly easily but unless they require individually identifiable data for the research, the WSIPP researchers only request de-identified data from the data owners. The use and sharing of data, especially involving outside use of the institute’s research databases, is governed by the board of the institute. The board comprises representatives of the legislature, the governor’s office, and the public universities and oversees all activities, including the decisions about which projects WSIPP should accept. The board, on the basis of a set of criteria defined by 2016 bye-laws, will make the final decision about participating in research or providing access to research databases. WSIPP also ensures data privacy through some technical mechanisms, including hierarchical access protocols as well as a range of data sharing protocols.
Analytical talent: 20 full-time staff with public policy and research backgrounds and expertise in various statistical techniques and issues areas.
Methodologies: WSIPP provides two main services: Policy research and cost-benefit analysis. The policy research typically estimates the effectiveness at achieving an outcome. The second, is WSIPP’s benefit-cost analyses, which produce 3 statistical summaries, namely a “net present value, a benefit-to-cost ratio and a measure of risk associated with these bottom-line estimates,” the model is described in great detail as part of the technical documentation developed by the institute. The benefit-cost analysis includes 3 steps. The first, is to identify tried-and-tested policy options to achieve the intended outcomes (both in the US and abroad). In the second step, they determine the dollar costs of implementing those programs in Washington state in order to analyze the benefits and costs of potential policy decisions. Finally, risks are estimated to determine the chances that a policy would break even. The WSIPP staff has a variety of capabilities, including the ability to conduct RCTs or propensity score matching, and uses the best method for the question being asked. The report published for each research project includes a section dedicated to describing the methodology adopted for analysis.
WSIPP also accepts projects or requests for access to their research databases from outside the state legislature for example, other state agencies who would like WSIPP to complete an analysis. These projects need to be approved by the data owners prior to WSIPP releasing any data. The board has delegated authority to WSIPP on the individual project level, in accordance with the protocols laid out in the bye-laws. Provided that the project fulfills those requirements⁵, the staff can decide to accept the project if it requires less than $10,000 of resources. For projects that require more assistance, the board’s approval is required.
Disseminating Findings: WSIPP’s reports are distributed to the state legislature, executive branch, and stakeholders. The Institute maintains an email distribution list that allows individuals and organizations to sign up to receive notices when reports are completed.
WSIPP also publishes the reports from all their research activities and benefit-costs analyses on their website. The reports, including the models upon which they are based, are available for public access at http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/Reports and can be filtered by topic or author.
Successes/ Impact: WSIPP has become one of the most well-respected and important state-funded policy evaluation groups in the country. WSIPP’s benefit-cost analysis tool, developed for Washington State to calculate the return on investment to taxpayers from evidence-based prevention and intervention programs and policies, has been used to answer numerous policy questions about the use of taxpayer money, and has been replicated in 25 other states as part of the Pew-MacArthur Results First Initiative⁶. WSIPP’s policy research has directly impacted policy decisions to reduce K-12 class size and influenced K-12 school funding as well as critical budget allocations for adult corrections and child welfare.
The model itself, a non-partisan group of researchers funded primarily through the state on a project basis, is becoming a best-practice for state legislatures in bringing evidence-based policy to the forefront.
Funding resources: WSIPP is funded on a project-by-project basis as well as for its daily operations primarily by the state government through the biennial operating budget of The Evergreen State College. In some rare instances, they also undertake funded projects from outside the state legislature.
Distinguishing characteristics: Some statutes limit access to administrative data by non-state entities. But since WSIPP carries out evaluations and research primarily for the state legislature, the institute’s access to administrative data is aided by the fact that it is part of the government. This, to a large extent, eliminates many of the legal concerns that arise when government needs to share administrative data with outside agencies. The remaining concerns are mitigated thanks to the governance structures in place such as the institute’s board of directors and the principles they are to abide by as per the bye-laws. The institute has also developed⁷ several resources like a “matching procedure” to trace individuals across databases maintained by the Courts and the Department of Corrections which is necessary to evaluate many programs related to criminal justice. These matching procedures across databases in one agency or across several agencies is enabled by WSIPP’s proximity to government and the mandate it has by a resolution of the house of representatives. These are important enabling factors for a data lab to obtain data from a data owner.
Contact details: institute@wsipp.wa.gov
We’d like to thank Bethanne Barnes, Director, WSIPP, for her assistance.
Footnotes:
¹ See Washington State Institute for Public Policy: Origins and Governance, Appendix A, WSIPP, June 2009
² ³ Interview Bethanne Barnes, Director, WSIPP on July 5, 2017
⁴ Definition of these terms is available in Washington State Institute for Public Policy: Origins and Governance, p6 (Research),WSIPP, June 2009
⁵ This service is temporarily on-hold as of December 2017
⁶ See Pew-MacArthur Results First Initiative
⁷ See Washington State Institute for Public Policy: Origins and Governance, p17 (Research Databases),WSIPP, June 2009
