By admin 
South Carolina state agencies are awash in data, but the valuable information they collect about education, employment and the economy too often remains siloed and unexamined.
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Lawmakers are hoping to change that.
The General Assembly has set aside money in this year’s budget to create a public policy institute that will be tasked with integrating and analyzing government data collected across several state agencies to support informed decision-making by state and local policymakers.
The institute, which will be housed at the University of South Carolina, will focus on education and workforce issues to start, but over time could branch out into areas such as public health, economic development, public safety and infrastructure.
“It’s a really interesting concept,” said state Sen. Sean Bennett, R-Dorchester, a major proponent of the initiative. “It has a lot of potential to help policymakers make better decisions — data-based decisions instead of emotionally-based decisions — and I see it working in conjunction with many of our agencies.”
The senator said the institute would be modeled after the Helios Education Foundation, an Arizona nonprofit that uses data to help improve educational outcomes for low-income and historically underrepresented students in Arizona and Florida.
Bennett first visited Helios several years ago as part of an education fellowship program for state political leaders. Impressed by what he saw, he got to thinking about replicating their work in the Palmetto State.
Last fall, the senator took a group of state agency officials to tour the organization’s Phoenix campus and said he was encouraged to learn that South Carolina was “way ahead” of many states with respect to interagency data sharing.
“We’re just trying to take that ball and run with it,” said Bennett, who envisions a future where South Carolina lawmakers can request data analyses in real time as they wrestle with complex policy and budgetary decisions.
“There’s really all kinds of uses if we’ve got good data and a good way to visualize that data and understand it,” he said.
The General Assembly, which could be approved as soon as next week, and is expected to pitch in a comparable amount for the next several years to help get it off the ground.
Bennett said he wants to get the institute up-and-running quickly, but acknowledged it would likely be multiple years before it’s fully operational.
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“This is a big undertaking, and it’s an important undertaking,” the Dorchester Republican said. “We want to make sure we get it right.”
USC’s role
Lawmakers opted to locate the public policy institute at USC, rather than within state government, to keep it nimble and efficient.
The decision did not sit well with state Sen. Wes Climer, R-York, who said he supported the concept, but objected to USC’s involvement with the project.
Climer, who is running to succeed U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman in the 5th Congressional District, argued that USC had “every one of the vices on steroids that are within government” and questioned the university’s ability to objectively process and present data.
“It would be a mistake to locate this institute at the University of South Carolina or any institution of higher education,” he said during a budget hearing in April. “As a general matter, institutions of higher ed today, in the current climate, lack adequate culture for undertaking the significant responsibility proposed in this proviso.”
While Bennett said he was sympathetic to Climer’s concerns and would have preferred to house the center at a nonprofit like Helios, nothing comparable exists in South Carolina.
“There is no third-party independent nonprofit to do it, the government isn’t an area to do it, where else can it go?” he said during the budget discussion. “A research university tends to make sense to me. They’ve got the bandwidth, they’ve got the resources, they’ve got the technical ability, as well as the data knowledge.”
The senator said Thomas Hodges, dean of USC’s College of Education, would head up the effort.
Hodges, who traveled to Phoenix last year with Bennett and state agency leaders, directed questions about the institute to the university’s public information office.
USC spokesman Jeff Stensland confirmed the flagship institution’s involvement in the project, but declined to provide any additional details about its plans for the center at this time.
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