Legislature(2017 - 2018)FAHRENKAMP 203
04/19/2018 03:00 PM Senate EDUCATION
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| Audio | Topic |
|---|---|
| Start | |
| HB221 | |
| Adjourn |
* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
| + | HB 221 | TELECONFERENCED | |
| + | TELECONFERENCED | ||
ALASKA STATE LEGISLATURE
SENATE EDUCATION STANDING COMMITTEE
April 19, 2018
3:04 p.m.
DRAFT
MEMBERS PRESENT
Senator Gary Stevens, Chair
Senator Cathy Giessel
Senator John Coghill
Senator Shelley Hughes
MEMBERS ABSENT
Senator Tom Begich
COMMITTEE CALENDAR
HOUSE BILL NO. 221
"An Act relating to the duties of the Alaska Commission on
Postsecondary Education; relating to a statewide workforce and
education-related statistics program; relating to information
obtained by the Department of Labor and Workforce Development;
and providing for an effective date."
- MOVED HB 221 OUT OF COMMITTEE
PREVIOUS COMMITTEE ACTION
BILL: HB 221
SHORT TITLE: WORKFORCE & ED RELATED STATISTICS PROGRAM
SPONSOR(s): REPRESENTATIVE(s) DRUMMOND
04/08/17 (H) READ THE FIRST TIME - REFERRALS
04/08/17 (H) EDC, FIN
02/09/18 (H) EDC AT 8:00 AM CAPITOL 106
02/09/18 (H) Scheduled but Not Heard
03/05/18 (H) EDC AT 8:00 AM CAPITOL 106
03/05/18 (H) Heard & Held
03/05/18 (H) MINUTE(EDC)
03/07/18 (H) EDC RPT 4DP 1NR
03/07/18 (H) DP: PARISH, KOPP, JOHNSTON, DRUMMOND
03/07/18 (H) NR: TALERICO
03/07/18 (H) EDC AT 8:00 AM CAPITOL 106
03/07/18 (H) Moved HB 221 Out of Committee
03/07/18 (H) MINUTE(EDC)
04/02/18 (H) FIN AT 1:30 PM ADAMS ROOM 519
04/02/18 (H) Heard & Held
04/02/18 (H) MINUTE(FIN)
04/11/18 (H) FIN RPT 4DP 5NR
04/11/18 (H) DP: GARA, GUTTENBERG, GRENN, FOSTER
04/11/18 (H) NR: WILSON, PRUITT, ORTIZ, THOMPSON,
TILTON
04/11/18 (H) FIN AT 9:00 AM ADAMS ROOM 519
04/11/18 (H) Moved HB 221 Out of Committee
04/11/18 (H) MINUTE(FIN)
04/15/18 (H) TRANSMITTED TO (S)
04/15/18 (H) VERSION: HB 221
04/17/18 (S) READ THE FIRST TIME - REFERRALS
04/17/18 (S) EDC
04/19/18 (S) EDC AT 3:00 PM FAHRENKAMP 203
WITNESS REGISTER
REPRESENTATIVE HARRIET DRUMMOND, Bill Sponsor
Alaska State Legislature
Juneau, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Presented HB 221.
STEPHANIE BUTLER, Executive Director
Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education (ACPE)
Department of Education and Early Development (DEED)
Juneau, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Testified on HB 221.
KERRY THOMAS, Director of Operations
Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education (ACPE)
Department of Education and Early Development (DEED)
Juneau, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Testified on HB 221.
PAUL PRUSSING, Director
Division of Teaching and Learning Support
Department of Education and Early Development (DEED)
Juneau, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Testified on HB 221.
PALOMA HARBOUR, Director
Division of Administrative Services
Department of Labor and Workforce Development (DOLWD)
Juneau, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Testified on HB 221.
ACTION NARRATIVE
3:04:52 PM
CHAIR GARY STEVENS called the Senate Education Standing
Committee meeting to order at 3:04 p.m. Present at the call to
order were Senators Hughes, Giessel, and Chair Stevens.
HB 221-WORKFORCE & ED RELATED STATISTICS PROGRAM
3:05:04 PM
CHAIR STEVENS announced the consideration of HB 221.
3:05:08 PM
REPRESENTATIVE HARRIET DRUMMOND, Bill Sponsor, Alaska State
Legislature, presented HB 221. She said HB 221 is part of
ongoing efforts to take a detailed look at ways to improve how
the state spends money on education and job training. Alaska
spends more than $2 billion annually on education and workforce
training, but she asked does the state know which program
produces trained Alaskans who are more likely to stay in Alaska.
She asked, "What is the return we receive on these huge and
critical investments?"
REPRESENTATIVE DRUMMOND said that HB 221 will help the
legislature answer these questions by clarifying the authority
of the Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education (ACPE) to
receive and analyze existing data from state entities through a
statewide workforce and education-related statistics program. HB
221 changes the law to permit the Department of Labor and
Workforce Development (DOLWD)to share existing unemployment
insurance data for the purposes of this statistics program as
permitted in federal regulation and contingent upon a written
agreement with ACPE. HB 221 is not about tracking individuals or
collecting data on them. It is about statistical outcomes,
taking a bird's eye view of spending results based on analyzing
and aggregating data that already exists. Failure to pass HB 221
this session will result in wasted work, wasted money, and lost
opportunities. Without the authority provided by HB 221 to ACPE
to receive and analyze needed data, it is highly unlikely that
the memorandum of understanding between the four partner
agencies, which expires this fiscal year, will be renewed.
3:07:29 PM
REPRESENTATIVE DRUMMOND said the potential losses include the
destruction of about ten years of deidentified data that is
already loaded into the system and a severe reduction in the
likelihood of attracting additional funds. About 20 to 25
percent of the federal grant, or about $800,000 to $1 million,
was invested in developing file preparation related to loading
the data. If Alaska realizes it needs this data, it would have
to be redone. A database that is not used would require
extensive testing when use is re-established.
3:08:02 PM
REPRESENTATIVE DRUMMOND said the state would lose the ability to
respond to statistical outcomes or requests to perform cross-
sector analyses, such as the Alaska Performance Scholarship
Outcomes Report, at a savings of 20 to 25 percent per report
generated. HB 221 is designed to allow Alaska to realize the
potential of the original $4 million federal grant, which
created the outcomes system. This will help the legislature to
allocate and utilize increasingly scarce resources available for
education and workforce training. It has no additional cost to
the state. Twenty-eight states have similar longitudinal
outcomes databases. More are being added all the time. Alaska
should not waste this opportunity.
3:09:14 PM
STEPHANIE BUTLER, Executive Director, Alaska Commission on
Postsecondary Education, Department of Education and Early
Development (DEED), testified on HB 221. She said the Outcomes
Database is a system to deidentify and link existing data in
order to provide policy makers with information on the outcomes
of the state's education programs to answer questions like what
is the return on investment for ACPE programs, are the programs
the most effective way to increase higher education access and
success, and are limited funds being used in way to produce the
best returns for students and the Alaska public. Easy things to
measure such as number of program participants or completers
cannot answer that return on public investment question. They
need to know long-term outcomes across different public sectors.
Alaska spends about $5 million annually on the Alaska Education
Grant program. She asked if recipients graduate at higher rates,
do the grants help recipients enter the workforce sooner, and do
they earn more. Earlier in the session they had questions about
whether loan forgiveness is successful. Cross-sector outcomes
database would give the answer.
3:11:29 PM
MS. BUTLER said that without long-term, cross-sector
information, they do not know if they are spending public money
in smart ways. The challenge to answering these questions is not
that they do not have data, but the data is housed in separate
databases at each of the partner organizations. Each time there
is a question, agencies must put together a data-sharing
memorandum of understanding, extract the data, match it, link
it, and after getting the answers, the data must be destroyed in
accordance with federal law to protect privacy because it is
identifiable data. If they have a follow-up question or want to
do the report again, the process must start all over again. It
is inefficient and expensive and can result in the duplication
of identifiable citizen data. HB 221 will allow ACPE to
efficiently use this data while enhancing privacy by ensuring
the data is deidentified. It streamlines the process and
addresses data privacy by allowing Department of Labor to share
unit-level wage records with the Outcomes Database, which will
securely house, deidentify, and link statistics from ACPE, the
university, the Department of Education, and the Department of
Labor.
3:12:40 PM
SENATOR COGHILL arrived.
3:12:51 PM
MS. BUTLER said right now they have only GED data and training
data from Labor. With HB 221, the database will house wage-
record statistics. Alaska spends more than $2 million annually
on K-12 postsecondary and technical workforce training, but they
do not have the database that can provide efficient, cost-
effective, secure, outcomes statistics. The Outcomes Database
will enhance Alaska's ability to provide feedback in several
ways:
· allows Labor to provide unit-level wage data to the
Outcomes Database (something 28 states already share);
· prohibits sharing of any unit-level data from the
database with the federal government;
· to maximize privacy, it codifies in law that the data
must be deidentified;
· and clarifies ACPE's ability to maintain longitudinal
data.
MS. BUTLER said HB 221 provides a more secure method of
transporting data between agencies. It lowers costs to access
and analyze information. It combines multiple processes into a
secure and highly automated process. It provides greater access
to longitudinal information and it reduces the time and cost to
produce program outcomes reporting. HB 221 has a zero fiscal
note. The Outcomes Database was created with a federal grant and
built to accept this workforce data. In the longer term, they
will seek resources, perhaps with a federal grant, to provide
outcomes reports once these additional data are available. There
is significant opportunity to attract grant dollars to this
project. In tough budget times, cross-sector data is needed to
evaluate outcomes. The outcomes and analyses will not be
available immediately, but HB 221 gets them closer to being able
to provide those analyses as they seek grants or other funds.
Alaska will be not be competitive in attracting grant dollars
without the changes of HB 221. The long-term goal is to have the
ability to quickly and inexpensively produce reports, so they
know not just how much programs cost, but what the return is on
the investment.
3:15:53 PM
MS. BUTLER said the organizations providing data have a great
deal of experience and expertise with data privacy and security.
They recognize their sober responsibility of ensuring that state
data is private and secure. They have built the Outcomes
Database and reporting protocols as follows:
· No new data is collected. All data is existing data
only.
· Data is deidentified or stripped of personal
information, such as date of birth, social security
number, before the linked data is stored.
· Data going into the system is not a dump of all the
data the providing agency maintains. It is only
relevant data for evaluating program outcomes.
· Personal information is never stored in the same
database as the deidentified information. All data is
also encrypted.
· Deidentification and encrypted processes are
automated, meaning they cannot be turned off or
circumvented.
· Access to the system is automatically logged and
reported.
· The database is physically housed in Alaska in a
secure data center. Staff with access to the system
must undergo a background check.
· The system undergoes an annual security audit. The
results are public.
3:18:06 PM
MS. BUTLER said a final important point is that the purpose of
the Outcomes Database is not to track individual student data
over a student's career. The system was specifically designed
not to do that. The purpose is to create aggregated statistical
outcomes information to evaluate whether education programs and
interventions work over the long term.
CHAIR STEVENS said he appreciated the zero fiscal note and that
no funds will be spent until and unless a grant is received.
3:18:12 PM
SENATOR HUGHES said assurances of privacy is one of their
mandates under the state constitution. She shared that she does
have a seat on the ACPE. She wants to make sure there is no
loophole regarding privacy, although she is excited about what
they will learn. She visualized a stack of education data and a
stack of workforce data. Once this information is in the
database, they can be reassured that personal information will
not be shared with other agencies or organizations. Lines 10-12
of Section 2 specify that information can be shared. She asked
if that information could ever be taken from the stacks that
will have personally identifiable information or can she be
assured that it will only be shared after personally
identifiable data has been removed.
SENATOR HUGHES said she asks because they are specifying that
they are not providing unit records, which is that personal
information, to the federal government, but they are not
addressing not providing it to anyone else. She wondered if they
needed to add federal government "and other agencies and
organizations." She wondered whether they were leaving a
loophole that could be used to share information that would have
personal information before it is entered into the database.
3:20:25 PM
MS. BUTLER responded that the data in the system will be
deidentified and ACPE cannot share that data under existing law
with an organization that doesn't already have a right to
receive it at a unit level. The purpose of the language about
not sharing it with the federal government was to ensure that
were the federal government to ask for it, they would not share
it. They have built the database so that it would be
extraordinarily difficult, even for ACPE, to get unit-level
data.
3:21:11 PM
SENATOR HUGHES said that she understood the situation for data
coming out of the database and felt comfortable with that. Her
question was about the data before it is put into the database.
Line 10-12 of Section 2 says ACPE can share data and
information, but it doesn't specify "share data and information
from the database." She wants to make sure that there is not a
loophole wherein information with identifiable information that
has not been entered into the database could be shared.
3:21:53 PM
MS. BUTLER answered that before data, which is personally
identifiable, goes into the database, the data is managed by the
organization responsible for it, such as the Department of Labor
for the wage records. All of laws that apply to the data
continue to apply to it. The commission would have no authority
to share data from another organization with anybody. The
organization providing the data would have the authority to do
that, not the commission.
3:22:28 PM
SENATOR HUGHES responded that she is concerned that once it
comes from Department of Labor and is in Ms. Butler's
possession, the law gives her permission to share data
information, but it doesn't specify that the data Ms. Butler can
share is from the database.
3:22:59 PM
KERRY THOMAS, Director of Operations, Alaska Commission on
Postsecondary Education (ACPE), Department of Education and
Early Development (DEED), testified on HB 221. She said that
partner organizations that contribute data to the outcomes
system do not give up control of data. They upload data that
then goes through a matching process where files are separated
into deidentified records and then [assigned] random id's that
follow records into the deidentified system. Then the source
files that are sent to the system are deleted once they go
through the matching and deidentification process. If someone
asked ACPE for data, ACPE would refer that person to the partner
organization that provided the data. The full set of data does
not exist in the outcomes system.
3:25:09 PM
PAUL PRUSSING, Director, Division of Teaching and Learning,
Department of Education and Early Development (DEED), testified
on HB 221. He said DEED has been working on this project since
2012. The commissioner appreciates data-informed decision
making. Making better use of any data they have in a secure
fashion to help inform policy makers is a good direction to go.
3:26:06 PM
PALOMA HARBOUR, Director, Division of Administrative Services,
Department of Labor and Workforce Development (DOLWD), testified
on HB 221. She said they have specific data security standards
for their data. They cannot share it with ACPE for this purpose
without a statutory change. The data security requirements and
standards that apply to them apply to anyone they share the data
with. ACPE cannot reshare the data with anyone and they must
destroy the data after they are done with it in their system.
3:27:21 PM
SENATOR HUGHES said in Section 3 there are certain requirements
for ACPE to share with other state agencies but not other
organizations. She asked if DOLWD standards apply to any
organization they share data with or just other state agencies.
3:27:54 PM
MS. HARBOUR answered any organization that they share with. They
cannot disclose unit data. They can report outcomes.
3:28:30 PM
SENATOR HUGHES said perhaps the sponsor could answer why they
are only making requirements about sharing with other state
agencies and not any agency.
3:28:42 PM
CHAIR STEVENS asked if passing HB 221 makes the state more
competitive for grants.
3:28:56 PM
MS. HARBOUR replied that they would be more competitive if they
had legislative approval for this work.
3:29:46 PM
At ease for technical reasons.
3:34:48 PM
CHAIR STEVENS apologized that because of technical difficulties,
the three invited testifiers, Gwendolyn Gruening, Cari-Anne
Carty, and Doug Walrath, cannot testify. He understands that the
three are in favor of the bill. He asked them to submit any
information in writing.
3:35:28 PM
SENATOR HUGHES said that the Department of Labor has high
standards to share data with any organization or a state agency.
In Section 3 of the bill, there are requirements regarding
disclosure, but that section only refers to information being
shared with another state agency. She asked what about other
organizations.
3:36:29 PM
MS. BUTLER answered that Section 3 applies to the Department of
Labor data, specifically allowing the department to share that
data with ACPE. All other requirements for the Department of
Labor continue and persist, so ACPE would not be allowed to
share it further.
3:37:00 PM
MS. HARBOUR said AS 23.20.110 covers the Labor unemployment
insurance data that they are talking about. There are sections
for different criteria for sharing the data. This section of the
bill is just adding ACPE Outcomes Database to that statute, so
it is not all inclusive.
3:38:01 PM
SENATOR HUGHES said then they are applying the high standard Ms.
Harbour described earlier to ACPE.
MS. HARBOUR answered correct.
SENATOR HUGHES said that is reassuring.
3:38:21 PM
CHAIR STEVENS opened public testimony and then closed public
testimony.
3:38:39 PM
At ease.
3:38:45 PM
CHAIR STEVENS asked the will of the committee.
SENATOR COGHILL moved HB 221 with individual recommendations and
attached fiscal note.
3:39:58 PM
There being no objection, the motion passed.
3:40:03 PM
At ease.
3:40:06 PM
There being no further business to come before the committee,
Chair Stevens adjourned the Senate Education Standing Committee
at 3:40 p.m.
| Document Name | Date/Time | Subjects |
|---|---|---|
| 00_HB221_Workforce Ed Data_FullBillPacket_19April2018.pdf |
SEDC 4/19/2018 3:00:00 PM |
HB 221 |