4 Ways Data Can Advance Your Governments ARPA Grants

Tyler Podcast Episode 31, Transcript

Our Tyler Technologies podcast explores a wide range of complex, timely, and important issues facing communities and the public sector. Expect approachable tech talk mixed with insights from subject matter experts and a bit of fun. Host and Content Marketing Director Jeff Harrell – and other guest hosts – highlights the people, places, and technology making a difference. Give us listen today and subscribe.

Episode Summary

With the American Rescue Plan Act grants hitting state and local government, how can data be used to maximize this once in a generation opportunity? Oliver Wise, Director of Recovery Solutions for Tyler's Data & Insights Division helps us understand this very issue by sharing four ways data can advance these ARPA grants. Oliver explains how data is an essential force multiplier to the ARPA for state and local governments to help them prioritize recovery investments, evaluate programs, promote equity, and comply with federal reporting requirements.

Transcript

Oliver Wise: The US treasury realizes that data is vitally important to helping state and local governments know how to spend this money, how to track it, how to evaluate it and how to account for this funding, so they've explicitly laid out in their guidance that they provide to state and local governments, that spending on data, and data technology, that helps support the efficacy of their economic recovery is a eligible expense.

Jeff Harrell: From Tyler Technologies, it's the Tyler Tech Podcast, where we talk about issues facing communities today and highlight the people, places in technology, making a difference. I'm Jeff Harrell. I'm the director of content marketing here at Tyler and I'm so glad that you joined me.

Well, the American rescue plan act is a huge opportunity for the public sector. A certainly very important time for the public sector, and we've got a special episode today. We have Oliver Wise, who's the director of Recovery Solutions for Tyler's data and insights division. He's going to talk about four ways that data can advance your government's ARPA grants. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Oliver Wise.

Well, Oliver, I know you've been on the show before and I'm really excited to have you back.

Oliver Wise: Thanks, Jeff. Good to see you again.

Jeff Harrell: Yeah, you too. And I know we're talking about ARPA today and how data relates to that, but I thought it'd be good to start with a little bit of a foundation and, if you don't mind, talk a little bit about what ARPA is and where we currently are with that project.

Oliver Wise: Yeah, sure. So ARPA stands for the American Recovery Plan Act, and that is the Biden Administration signature economic stimulus bill that was passed earlier this year. It was passed within President Biden's first 100 days. What's unique about this bill, one is its sheer magnitude. It's $1.9 trillion in the full package, but it contains $350 billion that's earmarked for flexible aid to state and local government. There was the CARES Act, if you remember, last year, which was the first big federal response, fiscally speaking, after the pandemic hit. But that bill really, there was a lot of money in there for direct coronavirus response, but not a lot of money for helping shore up the finances of state and local governments, so this $350 billion is really the first big opportunity for state and local governments. It's a sufficient amount of resources to really fund some transformative projects within communities around the country.

Data can help policy makers.

Jeff Harrell: Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for that foundation. I think it's good that you too pointed out what the difference between the CARES Act and ARPA is. And in this podcast we love lists, so we're going to talk today about four ways data can advance your government's APAR grant. Very excited to talk about that.

And the first way, and these sound pretty complex, but I think they're really not. I'll talk about this first one and have you talk about it. Data can help policy makers, design policy intervention that addresses the most impacted industries and communities. What does that mean?

Oliver Wise: So one of the things that's been unique about this economic recession, as opposed to recessions in the past, is that this recession really hasn't hit everyone equally. This has not been about a economy wide contraction, and what we actually see in the data is that there's wide variation, industry by industry, in how those industries are faring. So there are some industries, and we see this in the data from the partners that we're working with here at Tyler, but there's some industries, like computers and electronics, like home computer and electronics, that have gone gangbusters over the last 18 months, as everyone is building out their home offices or buying computers for their kids for online learning.

Another industry that we see as really taken off is home construction, as people have made improvement to their homes. Another one that we see pop up all the time is anything related to outdoor hobbies. I say with a garage full of new kayak fishing equipment. So there are some industries that have really done quite well. Other industries that have really, really suffered. And those are things like travel and food and accommodations and the ones that you'd suspect. So within this economy, you have some places and some industries that have done really quite well, others that have suffered.

When you're talking about designing policy interventions to address the challenges that state and local governments face now, a one size fits all approach to delivering some stimulus for your local economy is likely... You're likely not going to get the most bang for the buck if you have something that's spread very wide, but doesn't go particularly deep in the industries and the communities that need it most. So what data is really important for, or the first item we want to talk about, is isolating those industries and those communities that have suffered the most so that you can direct and target your interventions accordingly. There's no use in using some of that money to subsidize industries or areas that are doing well on their own. That's a waste of government resources. State and local governments really want to transform their communities and come out of this pandemic more equitable and more vibrant and providing more opportunities for more people than what they did before, then it's really incumbent upon them to use their resources strategically in a targeted way.

Jeff Harrell: That makes a lot of sense and you talked about the different industries. What about communities? You mentioned communities. Are there communities that are made up of industries that are more impacted and that's why they're suffering a little bit more?

Oliver Wise: Yeah. I mean, this pandemic has really resorted our economy. I've talked earlier about how that works industry to industry, but you see that play out place to place too. Let's talk about the real estate market for a second. Nationally, home prices are up substantially since the beginning of the pandemic. I think it was 14% the last figure I saw, year over year, from last year. There's wide variation community to community and there are some cities and some neighborhoods within cities that are boom markets, whereas others are quite depressed. Those communities who have their economies focused on industries that have been particularly hard hit, like the oil and gas sector for example, have really suffered substantially, whereas other places have seen a big influx of residents and are doing quite well. So it's really important for decision makers at the state and local government to understand how their economy is working, not just as a whole, but really, neighborhood by neighborhood.

Jeff Harrell: Yeah. I'm in Texas and my sister is a real estate, and man, the market here is nuts. In fact, if you list a house it's going to go higher than list price and you're going to have multiple offers. It's really crazy.

Oliver Wise: Yes.

Rapid Evaluations

Jeff Harrell: All right. Number two. I love that one, by the way. Being able to identify the industries and communities to help funnel this money to, I think that's great. Number two, here is, data allows policy makers to rapidly evaluate the impact of APAR funded programs. What does that mean?

Oliver Wise: We're in a time of great uncertainty of where our economy is headed. I mean, really by, if you look at the metrics, there's a lot of signs of a lot of headwinds. There's real estate values are up substantially. You see that employment is picking back up, in most labor categories. Consumer spending is up substantially, but there's tailwinds as well. I mean, there are some industries that have really suffered. Our data shows us from a data partner we're working with called Womply, which has data on small businesses, show that small business revenues are down 20, 30%, from where they were pre pandemic, so there's a great amount of uncertainty.

As state and local governments are designing policy interventions, hopefully in a targeted way, you want to understand what's working and what's not so you can scale what's working and if a intervention isn't working particularly, then you want to shift resources towards those interventions that do. The only way to really understand if something's working or not is to have good, granular and timely data on whether your programs are working or not.

Governments can look towards, I think, two big categories of data to do those evaluations. One is their own operational data on the productivity of their programs, so I think they're going to be looking internally to their own data on how many small business loans that they're assisting, or how the progress on the capital projects they might be funding with those resources to revitalize a particular area, or how many workers they're retraining. People who have lost their jobs in one industry and they need to retrain them for that, so those types of metrics, people in this space tend to call output or productivity measures, right?

But we're now at a time, and we've been working on this problem very closely over the last year or so at Tyler Technologies, is there's third party commercial data that can be gleaned from independent sources, that can be very useful for not just measuring how productive a government's programs are, but really, are those programs achieving the result that they set out to achieve. We in this space call those outcome measures, right?

At the end of the day, what you really care about when you're bringing back your economy are your small businesses making more revenue. Are people in your community getting out of their house and returning back to civic life to support your local businesses and your local public spaces? Are people actually spending more money, right? Are there more money in their pockets and do they feel more confident in the economy that they're actually consuming more?

So I just mentioned three different data points there, and we actually have a new offering here at Tyler Technologies called Tyler Recovery Insights. In some other channels it's known as economic intelligence, and what we've done in that solution is we've gone out and partnered with some really cutting edge data partners. One is Womply. Womply has data on small business revenues. SafeGraphs, the second organization we're working with. It's a mobile data aggregator. We can surface metrics there on visits or foot traffic to small businesses and points of interest, and then Affinity Solutions is the third partner we're working with there, which has data on consumer spend.;

It's one thing for governments to be measuring those productivity of their programs. They should absolutely be doing that, but what's even more important, I think, is understanding are those programs actually achieving the outcomes that they set out to achieve? With these measures on small business revenues, foot traffic, consumer spend, state and local governments, really I think, for the first time, have this data available to them that they can use to understand their economy and the impact of their interventions at a very granular level. At a census track by census track, that's basically a neighborhood by neighborhood level, industry by industry, and that data is refreshed on, at least, a weekly basis so that data really can tell you, in near real time, how your economy is progressing and if what you're doing is actually working or not.

Jeff Harrell: I love this Oliver because I think this is historic in terms of the amount of funds that local government's getting, and so being able to know where to put those funds, both you said, in industry and communities, and knowing if those programs that they're putting together are working is super important.

Oliver Wise: Critically important. Yes. Yeah, I mean, this is a once in a generation moment we're in, terms of the convergence of political will and real resources and a huge need at the local level, so if we get this right, we in the good government community get this right, I think we can really set ourselves on the path for, fundamentally, making our economy more inclusive and robust.

Equitable Recovery

Jeff Harrell: That leads us to the third way data can help and that's that data supports an equitable recovery for all community members. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Oliver Wise: Yeah. I mean, we entered this pandemic with already stark inequities in our economy, between the rich and poor, and that cuts across all different types of demographic lines as well. As we come out of this pandemic, I think it's vitally important, and this is not just us saying this, we hear this all the time from state and local governments you work with, that equity is front and center in how they're designing economic recovery plans and that's really encouraging. If you want data to be an aid in that effort, and you ought to, you can't just measure aggregate statistics on how your community is doing overall. It's not like looking at overall real estate values or overall consumption or gross metro product. That's important, but if you really want to get to the equity dimension, you need to disaggregate that data and get down to looking at that data on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis so you can understand whether your economy is really lifting all boats and all neighborhoods, or if it's just your wealthy neighborhoods that are getting back to where they were before.

So geospatial analysis, the ability to really disaggregate your data by place, is really important in providing that equity lens in your recovery. So one of the reasons why we're really bullish on the potential of third party data to augment the Corpus of data that state and local governments already have available to them, is that it's so geospatially granular. Because race and place are so intertwined in the country, if you can understand your economy spatially, you can really tease out the racial dynamics and other demographic dynamics of how your economic recovery is playing out and we think that's really important.

Automated External Reporting

Jeff Harrell: Well, the fourth one`, we're already at number four, and you're going to have to really help me understand what this fourth one means. Data leverage for internal management can be reused for automated external reporting. What does that mean?

Oliver Wise: One of the requirements of ARPA is that governments, state local county tribal governments with populations 250,000 and above, are required to submit public performance reports on how their ARPA funds are being spent, and whether the programs that those funds are spending are achieving their desired results#, right? So this is a required report that everyone has to spend.

The analog way to go about this is to have someone in the government go around department by the department, and collect everyone's data in a spreadsheet, and then put that spreadsheet, copy and paste it as an image into some PDF report, and then print out that report and put it in snail mail to the Treasury or whoever in the federal government is going to receive it. I think a much more modern, and a much more efficient way, to approach those reporting requirements is, make sure that you are using data internally to manage the allocation of those resources, so make sure that you're setting yourself up with the infrastructure to exactly know what those funds are allocated for, the rate at which they're being spent, and that you're then also developing metrics early on in the process, like at the policy design phase of how you're going to evaluate the impact of those programs, and then if you're using that data already internally to manage, then the notion of making some of that data public so that the feds can see it and so other oversight entities can see it, becomes really a trivial cost marginally speaking.

I'll give you an example. Pierce County, Washington, which is a customer that data insights division here at Tyler Technologies works very closely with it. Great, very progressive, and very data driven community there. Pierce County, Washington. They have been using our platform for their data needs and their performance reporting needs and they have set up this apparatus to track internally progress on their strategic goals, on their strategic goals set many years ago, well before the pandemic, and then they have a public report on that. They use that same apparatus already to set up a web based, very high quality report to treasury. It's really quite impressive so maybe we can put the link in the details on this podcast.

But you can go to their website and understand, in real time, how their legislative body has allocated their ARPA money, what has been spent, and then for those programs that are funded by that money, how the draw down on those funds are going, how productive those measures are. So you can literally go now, one of the programs that they're funding with their ARPA money is a small business recovery program that provides $10,000 grants or loans, I'm not too sure which one it is, to small businesses within Pierce County.

And you can look and they have the data already there of which businesses have received this grant. They're using that data internally to manage, but because it's just a flick of a switch, if you have all that data already being used for management, it just becomes a flick of a switch, to make that public, to satisfy the reporting requirements from treasury.

Jeff Harrell: Yeah. We'll definitely put the link to that in the show notes where people can go straight to that. That's awesome. And that's what you mean by automation, so it's just if you have the date already, you automate it, and then your reports ready to go.

Oliver Wise: Yes, exactly.

Jeff Harrell: I love it.

Oliver Wise: And there's just a note about the fund and the reporting requirements. It comes in two phases, so there's a first allocation of the money that just hit state and local government coffers in May of this year, but there's going to be another tranche of money, another 50% next May, and there is a reporting requirement for this August to report on how governments are spending their first tranche and then another report that's due next August. But if it's automated, they've already done the August '22s report already. It's just they'll have to provide some text to contextualize it, but all the data is fully automated already. So it's a very efficient way to provide those reports that would, otherwise, be very onerous.

Jeff Harrell: Love it. We love when technology solves problems in a really efficient way. Well, there you have it. That's four ways data can advance your government's APAR grant, and as you mentioned, Oliver, a once in a lifetime opportunity for governments to take advantage of these funds and really use data to help put it in the right place. If someone wanted more information, you mentioned the recovery insights product that the data and insights division has, how would they find out more about that?

Oliver Wise: Yeah, sure. And just one more note before I answer that specific question, but the US Treasury realizes that data is vitally important to helping state and local governments know how to spend this money, how to track it, how to evaluate it and how to account for this funding. So they've explicitly laid out in their guidance that they provide state and local governments that spending on data and data technology that helps support the efficacy of their economic recovery is a eligible expense. So really, state and local government should consider data and tech a key component, a key component of their apparatus, their infrastructure for effectively spending this money and navigating their economical recovery

 

If you want to get in touch with us, a great way is just to visit our website tylertech.com. We have a whole lot of resources there. There's a White Paper on there that we've authored to help state and local governments think about building their data apparatus to support their economic recovery. If you want a demo of our solutions, that can help in this respect, there's forms all over there that will get you in touch with someone who can provide a demo as well. The solution that I've been working closely on that's really dedicated, it's been explicitly for this problem. It's a data solution to help state and local governments navigate their economic recovery, and that's called Tyler Recovery Insights, and you can easily find it on our website.

Jeff Harrell: That's great, Oliver, and if someone wanted to ask a follow up question or wanted to get in touch with you directly, is there a way for them to do that as well?

Oliver Wise: Yeah, sure. You can email me at oliver.wise@tylertech.com. I'm also on social media if you want to get in touch with me that way. My Twitter handle is @ojwise and I'm on LinkedIn as well, so if you want to connect with me through those social media channels, I would be pleased to connect with you there as well.

Jeff Harrell: Awesome. Oliver, this has been fantastic. We'll link a lot of these things in the show notes, as we mentioned, and just want to thank you for your expertise and insight and helping us understand how data can really help us with these ARPA funds. Really appreciate it.

Oliver Wise: Thank you, Jeff. I enjoyed speaking with you.

Jeff Harrell: Well, I love it when technology can help solve a problem, or in this case, maximize an opportunity so thank you Oliver for helping us understand that. I hope you enjoyed that as well. I'll put links to some of the things that Oliver mentioned in the show notes, and by the way, we drop new episodes of the Tyler Tech Podcast every other Monday, so make sure you subscribe. We have lots of great episodes planned, so please join us.

Until then, this is Jeff Harrell, director of content marketing with Tyler Technologies. We'll talk to you soon.