Background: Various kinds of administrative data on child welfare and health field has become to be accumulated due to spread of digital devices at governmental and municipal institutions. Recently, the Government is promoting to utilize administrative data for policy evaluation purpose, yet the real practice is insufficient. The purpose of this workshop is to discuss innovative ways to collect, manage, and link administrative data regarding child welfare and health for policy/program evaluation in Japan.
Methods: The workshop was held on October the 11th at Faculty of Medicine Building 3. 8 members were invited to this workshop; caseworkers from child consultation center, municipal officials of welfare sector and planning sector, pediatricians, public health nurses, and master’s course students. First, three small lectures were given to clarify the purpose of this workshop and to inform the current status of data utilization in Japan. Second, group interview asking “good practice or trouble about data utilization for policy evaluation at your job position” was made dividing the members into two groups. Third, main discussion on “Ideals and difficulties in utilization of administrative data on child welfare and health in Japan” and “Create feasible ways to utilize data for policy evaluation purpose” were made changing the members in the two groups. Each member had small sticky notes, and wrote their various ideas on them. Each group integrated the ideas putting the small notes on large paper considering the relationship among the small ideas to depict the main issue of this workshop.
Results: Three main ideas were derived from this workshop. 1)What is lacking to promote policy evaluation on child welfare and health utilizing administrative data is shared consensus that administrative data is essential for policy evaluation. Human and financial resources to efficiently manage data are also lacking. 2) To solve the problem described above, national common format for collecting and managing data as already adopted in US and Canada is needed. Common format will reduce the cost to integrate data across municipalities, and enable analyses at each level of government (i.e. national, prefectural, and municipal). 3) Policy framework that enables data utilization including data linkage is desirable based on the common data management format as described in 2). A new governmental institution or sector that supports data management and linkage for policy evaluation purpose at municipal level as well as at national level may be needed. Also, collaboration between data management sector and child welfare and health sector should be strengthened. Data scientists who has specialty in welfare and health will be valuable to innovate the current issue.
Discussion: Participants of this workshop shared the importance of data utilization in child welfare field to improve policies and programs. A bottleneck of this issue should be lack of policy for policy evaluation. Although “Basic Act on the Advancement of Public and Private Sector Data Utilization” was enacted very recently, a feasible way how to conduct data utilization has not shown by the Government yet. Lack of budget and human resources are other bottle necks.
Conclusion: To utilize data effectively and to improve policies and programs in child welfare field, shared consensus on the importance of policy evaluation using administrative data, common format for data collecting, budget securing, and development of human resource are necessary.