Welcome to episode 20 of the Technology in Human Services Podcast. Be data driven. Make your decisions based on data. We’ve all heard the platitudes. And data is something that the immigrant and refugee-serving sector has huge amounts of, and does very little with. In 2017, the Toronto East Quadrant Local Immigration Partnership started looking into changing that. In this episode I interview Hope Nester, Research Partnership Lead on their Scarborough Newcomer Needs and Trends Report project. According to the 2016 Census newcomers made up 57 per cent of Scarborough’s population. Agencies collect data on clients and communities to ensure newcomers have the support systems they need in place. The project works with these organizations to surface, pool, and aggregate their collective data to identify newcomer service trends and needs. As you’ll hear, it’s a work in progress. An important work in progress that can teach all immigrant and refugee-serving agencies more about how they can better use data to improve services, build welcoming communities, and enhance inclusion in our cities. Some themes from our conversation: * Building a collaborative process and project is essential for success – “what we developed is a the idea to build a data pooling platform, so to build really a database where organizations could share data together in a really supportive and neutral space. So without fear of competition without fear of privacy and security issues, where they could come together and share information in a very neutral space.”* Legacy systems are cumbersome and agencies need support and guidance to either get the most out of them or switch to more user-friendly systems – “This project allowed us to say to people, what are you experiencing with your data? What do you know about your data? What do you know about data analytics? What do you know about management? And have them come together and share in an open way the trouble that they’re experiencing, and what they’re doing. Because they’re doing a lot of things really right. And so many of them are collecting the right information to make really great data driven decisions at their organization. They just need first and foremost, somebody who has the time and the resource to, to do some of that analytics work.”* Building cross-sectoral capacity will be essential, investments are needed – “I think we’re going to need some top down approach where funders are focused on pulling the sector into that next phase. Because organizations can’t do it on their own. They need the resources and the funding and they need funders who appreciate that they can’t necessarily compete in a data driven world with these large agencies who or or as you mentioned, we have private sector agencies coming in, or come organizations coming in. So we’re going to need support for those groups for sure.” Additional resources: * Toronto East Quadrant Local Immigration Partnership* How UTSC is teaming up with community groups to bring better services to Scarborough’s newcomers* Understanding the Data Needs of Settlement Stakeholders to Better Support Newcomers and Refugees (2016)