5
Transform Internal Structure and Operations to Align with and Directly Support the Strategic Plan
As NCES expands its audience and adapts its value proposition, its organizational structure must evolve to fulfill the Center’s new strategic goals. This chapter addresses the second element in the Statement of Task for this study: consider current and future priorities, operations, and staffing, including the use of contractors. Both NCES’s current and future operations, staffing, and use of contractors were reviewed to help NCES identify elements that are working well and those that are problematic now or may become so. This included reviews of publicly available information as well as other information provided by NCES upon request. The key findings are provided in this chapter, with additional detail provided in Appendixes D and E.
Detailed recommendations for staffing, size, use of contractors, and budget implications are dependent on the strategic plan outlined in Chapter 2, and so cannot be fully specified in this report. This chapter will explore various options and their implications that will need to be considered as the Center develops and implements its strategic plan.
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
In 2013, NCES and the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) were reorganized (see Easton, 2012).1 Some activities (e.g., Performance Information Management Service and EDFacts) were moved to NCES from the Office
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1 IES document provided to the panel, “Reorganization within the Institute of Education Sciences.”
of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development (OPEPD). NCES’s four divisions, which were organized along topical and methodological dimensions, were replaced with divisions organized by data source. Reasons for the reorganization, as offered in a memorandum from the IES director, included “efficiencies and improvements in both data quality and customer service, as well as reductions in customer and stakeholder burden” (Easton, 2012, p. 1).
NCES was reorganized around three divisions, each with a distinct focus: administering and reporting on formal assessments, performing longitudinal and crosscutting surveys, and collecting administrative statistics from state education agencies and postsecondary institutions (Figure 5-1). Outside those divisions, teams within the Office of the Commissioner perform functions that are crosscutting across specific collections or programs, such as annual reporting, statistical standards, and confidentiality. The expertise and management needed for each program predominantly exist within the division carrying out that program.2 Human resources, hiring, and information technology (IT) management are all currently managed out of IES’s front office.
BUDGET
Among 13 officially recognized federal statistical agencies in the United States, NCES has the third largest budget (U.S. OMB, 2020; see Appendix D). The American Statistical Association (ASA) has performed several detailed analyses of NCES’s staffing and budget (e.g., American Statistical Association et al., 2021; Pierson, 2021; Elchert and Pierson, 2020), which this study largely replicated and extended independently, using internal data provided by IES and NCES.
The statistics program accounts for about 35 percent of NCES’s overall budget.3 From fiscal years (FYs) 2003–2021, statistics appropriations have remained largely flat in absolute terms—fluctuating between $89M and $112M (see Appendix D, Figure D-2). Meanwhile, the appropriations for national assessment programs have increased substantially in the same time period—from $90M in FY 2003 to $165M today.
REIMBURSABLE WORK
NCES performs little reimbursable work overall, and the exact amount of reimbursable work varies from year to year depending on what specific
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2 NCES response to question from the panel, p. 39.
3 The statistics units count includes the Administrative Data Division, Sample Surveys Division and its predecessors, Statistical Standards and Data Confidentiality Staff, Annual Reports and Information Staff, and the Office of the Commissioner. IES document provided to the panel, “IES & NCES Historical FTE Data and IES Appropriations Historical”; NCES response to question from the panel, pp. 7–10.
SOURCE: https://nces.ed.gov/about/ [March 2022].
collections occur each year. In FYs 2019 and 2020, NCES received $6.3M in reimbursables from other federal agencies (U.S. OMB, 2020). The largest consistent reimbursable funding is passed in entirety through an interagency agreement (IAA) to the U.S. Census Bureau for the Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates program.4 Currently, there is no reimbursable arrange-
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4 NCES response to question from the panel, p. 6.
ment between the Department of Education (ED) program offices and NCES for handling EDFacts.5
STAFF CHARACTERISTICS
NCES staffing levels have dropped precipitously over time, particularly in the last 2 years. In FY 2021, NCES’s staff of 90 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees were responsible for the same workload handled by 95 FTEs in FY 2019 and 113 FTEs in FY 2015.6 NCES’s current workforce is mostly (65%) at the GS-14 and GS-15 levels. Statisticians (job series GS-1530) make up the majority of NCES staff.7 Managing contracts is an increasingly large part of staff workload. Daily, NCES staff must develop, plan, oversee, direct, review, and assess work performed by contractors.8 Consequently, NCES tends to hire and retain employees with the technical expertise and specialized work experience to effectively perform contracted tasks and, as a result, NCES currently has a lesser capacity than most large statistical agencies to hire, train, and develop junior, inexperienced staff.
Current and former NCES employees report that, because NCES is a small agency, most staff work across multiple projects and divisions. Figure 5-2 provides a snapshot into the distribution of NCES’s workforce across its organizational units. Of the 90 total FTEs that NCES currently employs, 32 are organized into assessment units and the remaining 58 are organized in statistics units.9 A full examination of how NCES staff work across projects, divisions, and functions would require fact finding that is beyond the scope of this report.
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5 NCES provided additional context for why there is no reimbursable aspect to EDFacts: “EDFacts is one of ED’s major information technology investments. Every year, funding decisions on all major IT investments are made by a central ED body (the Investment Review Board) and funds are marked to support the investments accordingly. IES/NCES is recognized as the point of contact (POC) implementing and managing EDFacts.” NCES response to question from the panel, p. 7.
6 IES document provided to the panel, “IES & NCES Historical FTE Data and IES Appropriations Historical.”
7 NCES document provided to the panel, “NCES Organizational Chart with Job Series Positions.”
8 NCES response to question from the panel, p. 17.
9 Also noted in Chapter 1 and Appendix D, the assessment units count includes the Assessments Division, a new branch established in 2013 comprising staff who work(ed) primarily on international studies, plus one FTE from across multiple employees located in the Office of the Commissioner who work on assessments for some of their time.
SOURCE: IES document provided to the panel, “IES & NCES Historical FTE Data and IES Appropriations Historical.”
NOTES: The organization of staff into statistics and assessment units does not align with program appropriations (Figure D-2). For example, staff who work primarily on international studies are organized in assessment units, while the program dollars for the international studies collections have always come from the statistics budget appropriation. The organization of full-time equivalents does not fully reflect the functional roles of the staff. Vacant positions are not represented. (See also Appendix D, Table D-2.)
*Statistics units are shown in varying shades of blue.
STAFF TURNOVER
It is generally believed that NCES is understaffed (American Statistical Association et al., 2021; Elchert and Pierson, 2020).10 For at least 18 years, NCES has faced a declining staffing budget. Between FYs 2003–2021,
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10 See also: https://ies.ed.gov/director/remarks/5-24-2021.asp [March 2022].
NCES experienced a net loss of 23 FTE (20%; see Appendix D, Table D-2). Over the same period, NCES faced multiple new unfunded mandates, such as the Geospatial Data Act, and an expansion in mission under the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 (Evidence Act). NCES’s annual net attrition rate averaged 4.5 percent from the start of FY 2018 to the end of FY 2021 (see Appendix D, Table D-3). At this rate, by FY 2032 NCES’s workforce will be half the size it started with in FY 2018. Within NCES, the statistics units experienced a net loss of 25 FTEs (30%) from FYs 2003–2021 (see Appendix D, Table D-2).11,12 The assessment units had a net gain of 2 FTEs (7%) in the same period.
Our analysis found structural and operational mechanisms that partially explain this downward trend in staffing. NCES has temporary hiring authority to hire FTEs into temporary positions for 3 years and to extend for 3 years maximum, after which time NCES, vis-a-vis IES, must post a competitive position within IES and recompete for that job. This hiring authority is intended for use in the federal government when an agency needs specialized expertise for a short-term project. As a result of the temporary hiring authority, NCES has lost staff and/or staff have lost wages between the end of the extension and the beginning of the new permanent position, resulting in a net loss of both staff and productivity over time, a substantially increased administrative burden, and decreased staff morale. Shifting an agency’s vacated positions back into a larger, often competitive, centralized pool is not an uncommon practice in the federal government.
The Senate’s FY 2022 appropriations report creates a separate appropriation for IES that is distinct from ED’s program administration account, which has funded IES since its inception, and leaves the door open for increasing NCES staffing in the future:
ESRA required IES, in carrying out its mission, to compile statistics, develop products, and conduct research, evaluations, and wide dissemination activities in areas of demonstrated national need and ensure that such activities conform to high standards of quality, integrity, and accuracy and are objective, secular, neutral, and nonideological and are free of partisan political influence. To better support this statutory mission, the Committee provides an appropriation for administrative expenses directly to IES.
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11 The organization of staff into statistics and assessment units does not align with program appropriations and does not fully reflect the functional roles of staff.
12 NCES-initiated reorganizations have changed the structure of NCES several times since 2002. For example, as part of the 2013 reorganization, six staff who worked primarily on international studies were moved from the Early Childhood, International, and Cross-cutting Division into a newly formed branch of the Assessments Division. The Administrative Data Division was added as part of the statistics units by FY 2015. Today, the statistics units include all subunits except for the Office of the Commissioner and the Assessments Division (see Appendix D, Table D-2).
Previously, administrative expenses for IES were supported from the appropriation for Program Administration under the control of the Secretary. The Committee recommendation is $67,527,000, an increase of 23 percent from comparable fiscal year 2020 spending (U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, 2021, p. 275).
AVERAGE NUMBER OF U.S. DOLLARS MANAGED BY EACH AGENCY EMPLOYEE
As noted above, NCES’s staff has declined while the statistics and Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems Grant Program appropriations have remained flat (see Appendix D, Table D-2, Figure D-2). Overall, each NCES staff member managed an average of $2.8 million dollars in FY 2021 (see Appendix D, Table D-1). NCES had the largest average number of dollars managed by each staff member13 of all 13 federal statistics agencies.
Figure 5-3 compares all 13 federal statistical agencies on the average number of U.S. dollars managed by each employee, based on the total number of employees in FY 2020. As shown, the average number of dollars managed per employee was nearly three times larger for NCES ($2.8M) than each of the next three largest agencies on this measure.14
USE OF CONTRACTORS
NCES accomplishes its mission by contracting out much of the Center’s work (Pierson, 2021; Elchert and Pierson, 2020). NCES has 43 staff (48%) who serve as contracting officer’s representatives (CORs) or administer IAAs in addition to other duties. On average, each COR or IAA administrator manages 3.7 IAAs or contracts (see Appendix D, Table D-4). Many of NCES’s data collections are conducted by contractors. Data analyses and writing, including NCES’s blog and conference presentations, are generated by a mix of staff and contractors.15 The 2019 report for the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act
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13 Also noted in Appendix D, Table D-1, this is the average number of dollars calculated as direct funding in FY 2020 divided by the number of FTE permanent staff—sometimes called the budget-to-staff ratio. It is used to express the average number of dollars managed by each agency staff member.
14 NCES has a budget-to-staff ratio of approximately $2.75M per FTE—more than seven times the median ratio for the 13 principal federal statistical agencies—according to ASA-compiled data for the 13 federal statistical agencies (Pierson, 2021).
15 For two recent examples, see American Association for Public Opinion Research (2021) Annual Conference Abstract Book (Available: https://www.aapor.org/AAPOR_Main/media/MainSiteFiles/AAPOR-2021-Conference-Program-5421.pdf [March 2022]) and the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology Fall 2020 Program (Available: https://copafs.org/fcsmfall-2020-conference-program/ [March 2022]).
SOURCE: U.S. OMB (2020), Appendix Tables 3a (Staffing Levels) and 1a (Direct Funding for Statistical Programs, 2018–2020).
NOTES: The size of each box indicates the average number of U.S. dollars (millions) managed by each agency full-time permanent employee. This is the average number of dollars calculated as direct funding in FY 2020 divided by number of FTE permanent staff, sometimes called the budget-to-staff ratio. It is used to express the average number of dollars managed by each agency staff member (see also Appendix D, Table D-1).
Colors are used to group agencies according to their size in FTEs (small, medium, large). Grey denotes large statistical agencies (more than 1,000 FTEs) and includes U.S. Census Bureau,* BLS, and NASS. Blue denotes medium statistical agencies (200–1,000 FTEs) and includes BEA, NCHS, and EIA. Yellow denotes small statistical agencies (less than 200 FTEs) and includes ERS, SOI, NCES, ORES, BTS, NCSES, and BJS. Gradations within each color group further differentiate workforce size with darker gradients representing larger agencies within a given group and lighter gradients representing smaller agencies.
*FY 2020 is a decennial census year.
shows 1,743 “contractor agents” for NCES involved in non-National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data collection and management, with another 411 working on design and planning, processing, documentation, and analysis, and 234 more providing IT support for data collections.16,17 It is less clear how heavily NCES currently relies on contractors for activities such as maintaining key stakeholder relationships.
Compared to other federal statistical agencies, NCES is particularly lopsided with respect to contractors versus FTEs (U.S. OMB, 2020). Managing contractors is a primary function of many NCES employees.18 Historically, the contractor staff has been heavily embedded into NCES, and at various times, contractual requirements have stipulated colocation with NCES staff at the Center’s offices.19 At times, this model has benefited NCES by allowing the Center to supplement staff quickly, without disrupting mandated operations. In the past, this arrangement also created a pipeline of vetted new staff who could fill vacated or newly created FTE slots. However, particularly when combined with sustained staffing losses, this model can result in knowledge loss over time.
RESOURCES FOR STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT, COMMUNICATION, AND DISSEMINATION
NCES has several long-standing channels for outreach and communications.20 The NewsFlash system remains at the center of NCES’s channels and is used for releases or significant updates. Many studies, assessments, and collections have also established outreach models to connect with their specific stakeholders. Except for communications related to NAEP, formal communications with the press, Congress, or other parts of ED are mainly coordinated through IES. Within NCES, no obvious person(s) or office(s) currently exists for growing and replenishing the Center’s users and
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16 The non-NAEP data collections include: Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study, Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Fast Response Survey System, High School and Beyond Longitudinal Survey, High School Longitudinal Study, Middle Grades Longitudinal Study, National Household Education Survey, National Teacher and Principal Survey, Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, Program for International Student Assessment, School Survey on Crime and Safety, and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study.
17 NCES document provided to the panel, “2019 Report to OMB on the NCES Implementation of the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (CIPSEA) in 2019.”
18 NCES response to question from the panel, p. 17.
19 See, for example, Federal Contract Opportunity for Education Statistics Support Institute Network ED-IES-11-R-0058, posted May 19, 2011. Available: https://govtribe.com/opportunity/federal-contract-opportunity/education-statistics-support-institute-network-essin-edies11r0058 [March 2022].
20 NCES response to question from the panel, pp. 37–38.
stakeholders, understanding the evolving needs of users and stakeholders, or innovating to meet those needs.
INTRADEPARTMENTAL OPERATIONS, SUPPORT, AND RELATIONS
Human resources, hiring, and IT management are all currently managed out of IES’s front office. Many of NCES products also require IES internal or external reviews (see Appendix E). Over the course of this study, IES reviews were frequently cited as a barrier to timeliness. According to a recent article by the ASA (Pierson, 2021, paragraph 5):
NCES has also lost autonomy and stature over the past two decades, undermining its ability to produce objective education statistics. NCES was moved under the newly created IES in 2002; its advisory panel was disbanded; and part of its budget, hiring, and contracting control was transferred to the IES director. A few years later, NCES’s authority to promise data confidentiality was weakened by the Patriot Act. In 2012, Congress removed the requirement of Senate confirmation of the commissioner, and there have since been several proposals to remove presidential appointment of the NCES commissioner. Finally, IES’s work to build its profile comes with diminishment of NCES’s profile.
Some unique features of the intradepartmental operations and relationships between NCES, IES, and ED were revealed during fact finding and deliberations for this study. First, NCES’s funding structure is different from that of other federal statistical agencies: like all IES centers, NCES’s FTE allocation is set by IES. Second, while there were many anecdotal reports of NCES’s value and utility to ED, NCES does not seem to get much, if any, formal recognition for its contributions to that work, which can create the perception that NCES’s value does not align with the actual work of NCES for ED. IES currently lists itself as the main producer of many NCES publications and products, in many cases not citing NCES as the responsible producer. For example, The College Scorecard is currently produced by the OPEPD, under the department’s chief data officer. However, NCES led the collaboration to merge student-level data held by ED’s student aid office with annual Internal Revenue Service income tax data (managed by the Social Security Administration) to produce aggregate earnings data, by school, for students who received federal student loans and grants. This work laid the foundation for the College Scorecard. The NCES staff person who led the effort took this function with him when he moved to OPEPD. Compared to other federal statistical agencies, NCES provides significant technical assistance to ED (see Chapter 2).21
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21 NCES response to question from the panel, p. 14.
KNOWLEDGE RETENTION
The issue of knowledge retention came up frequently in the panel’s work, particularly when discussing use of contractors. NCES’s contractors are increasingly relied upon to analyze data and write reports, which effectively reduces the ability of NCES’s staff to learn from the data and turn that knowledge into subsequent surveys or other data-collection designs. It was beyond the scope of this study to systematically examine knowledge retention at NCES. However, one proxy measure of knowledge loss is NCES’s annual employee turnover rate, which has ranged from 9 to 11 percent since FY 2018 (see Appendix D, Table D-3).22 This suggests that even if NCES backfilled all vacancies, the staff as a whole is losing 9–11 percent of its institutional knowledge each year. Also, in gathering information about staffing, use of contractors, and other operational characteristics, the panel gathered anecdotal information suggesting that the combined effects of staffing losses and increasing reliance on contractors are endangering NCES’s ability to retain knowledge and fully leverage the Center’s resources. When the contractors have institutional knowledge not shared by NCES staff, there is a risk of losing that institutional knowledge completely if contracts and/or contractors change.
NCES’S STRUCTURE AND OPERATIONS—CONCLUSIONS
While IES initially conceived of NCES’s current organization by data source as providing a “more rational and coherent organization structure” (Easton, 2012, p. 1), this study leads the panel to conclude that NCES’s structure is a barrier to the innovation, blended data, and cross-fertilization that will be central to the Center’s future success.
CONCLUSION 5-1: NCES’s current organizational structure, with statistical programs separated by data source type (sample surveys and administrative data), contributes to silos that limit innovation.
In the panel’s opinion, NCES should explore organizational and program-management structures that, at a minimum, promote blending of data sources and other innovations, insightful evidence building by education topic, and staff teamwork and cross-fertilization. Additionally, given the importance of growing and organizing NCES’s users and stakeholders, understanding stakeholders’ evolving needs, and innovating to meet those needs, NCES may also want to consider creating both a small innovation unit to assist with components design, study, and implementation of new
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22 This includes internal transfers from NCES to elsewhere in ED.
approaches and a small unit dedicated to promotion, external engagement, and integration of feedback into products and services. This would accelerate the necessary transition from siloed products based on data sources to a focus on educational topics and the types of questions, evidence, and diverse data sources needed to inform those topics. The panel considered the advantages and disadvantages of various organizational structures and program-management features (see Box 5-1):
- Scenario 1: Reorganize by topic or school level.
- Advantages: This may be a more intuitive organizational structure for new audiences, potentially making it easier for new stakeholders to navigate NCES.
- Disadvantages: This structure alone is not likely to promote cross-fertilization of data sources.
- Scenario 2: Adopt a matrix organizational structure along two dimensions: data source and topic or school level.
- Advantages: This arrangement has the same advantages as Scenario 1 but would also promote cross-fertilization of data sources.
- Disadvantages: This may be a difficult organizational structure to adopt within the federal government context. This structure is not necessarily more efficient.
- Scenario 3: Separate NAEP from NCES.
- Advantages: Separation would remove the structural constraints of a statistical agency from assessment activities, allowing for a “richer interpretation of the [assessment] results that can easily transcend the comfort level of a statistical agency.”23
- Disadvantages: A joint statement by the ASA and four other research and statistics organizations argues that “severing the important link of education inputs to what students learn and removing the legal guarantees of independence accorded a statistical agency for those assessment activities” (American Statistical Association et al., 2021, p. 3) is one of the challenges NCES faces in 2021. Staff currently work across these two programs, so separating them could further reduce staff and agency capacity. Additionally, such an arrangement would exacerbate the issue of silos by data source and further limit innovation.
CONCLUSION 5-2: NCES’s current overreliance on contractors and its high turnover rate endanger the Center’s ability to retain institutional knowledge and build internal capabilities needed to meet its strategic goals.
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23 See: https://ies.ed.gov/director/remarks/5-12-2020.asp [March 2022].
While the precise mission needs to be refined as part of the strategic plan, any realistic operationalization of that mission will depend on a competent, stable, and adequate workforce. When a position is vacated at NCES, the Center does not automatically get a backfill. As a result, at least 12 NCES programs have been discontinued and/or put on hiatus, citing lack of staff (e.g., there are no staff to oversee the contractors).24 These facts suggest that, if NCES is to successfully fulfill its promise and vision, additional support is needed to curb a deteriorating staffing situation. At the very least, NCES needs staff with the time and skills to advocate for its resource needs, including staff to support strategic-planning activities.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR LEVERAGING CONTRACTORS AND OTHER NONTRADITIONAL MECHANISMS FOR BUILDING AGENCY CAPACITY, RETAINING KNOWLEDGE, AND ENHANCING RESILIENCE
In the short term, NCES’s contracting model may provide valuable opportunities because contracts are useful for getting new things done quickly. If used appropriately, contractors could make NCES much nimbler. For example, capitalizing on opportunities provided by 21st-century advances in data collection, both within and outside the federal government, (e.g., web scraping, natural language processing, social media, data linking) will require skilled personnel who are dedicated to these functions. NCES has a profound shortage of data scientists and other staff; therefore, without
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24 NCES response to question from the panel, pp. 30–32.
the use of contractors, NCES may not realistically be able to rapidly increase its capabilities or capacity in areas that require sampling statisticians, assessment development experts, survey methodologists and statisticians, and data analysts and scientists.25
There are, however, disadvantages to heavy reliance on contracts. Staff with technical expertise are needed to manage contractors, even though managing contractors itself is nontechnical, which means that staff are underutilized.26 Communication between staff and contractors can be very slow, delaying operations. When established contracts constrain the scope of work, heavy use of contractors can result in the inability to adapt, or can cause delays due to contract modifications needed to make operational changes. Finally, there may be “perverse incentives” for contractors to avoid modernizing processes or improving quality and products.27
Based on the advantages and disadvantages of using contractors, it may be useful for NCES to consider the following questions in its strategic-planning activities:
- What functions can contractors effectively assume (and not assume) in the short and long term?
- What functions should, with time and support, be brought in-house (e.g., NISS, 2021a)?
- To what extent can contracts be used to build staffing pipelines, retain existing institutional knowledge, and build internal capabilities?
Another creative way to build staff capabilities and capacity is by establishing senior level and senior technical positions, which are not subject to Senior Executive Service caps.28 The U.S. Census Bureau and Energy Information Administration were among the first statistical agencies to make use of Senior Level and Senior Technical positions; this strategy has since been introduced to other agencies, such as the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Establishing such positions is one of several nontraditional tools that NCES could consider as it builds its technical (e.g., data science) capabilities.
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25 NCES response to question from the panel, p. 18.
26 Lynn Woodworth, “National Center for Education Statistics: A Vision of Education Statistics,” presentation to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, May 26, 2021.
27 Woodworth, p. 6.
28 See U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Policy, Data, Oversight: Senior Executive Service. Available: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/senior-executive-service/scientific-senior-level-positions [March 2022].
Another nontraditional staffing arrangement that would be advantageous for NCES to leverage is the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) Mobility Program, which “provides for the temporary assignment of personnel between the federal government and state and local governments, colleges and universities, Tribal governments, federally funded research and development centers, and other eligible organizations.”29 According to the Office of Personnel Management, “agencies do not take full advantage of the IPA program which, if used strategically, can help agencies meet their needs for ‘hard-to-fill’ positions.”30 Fellowships are another useful mechanism for increasing headcount and, if integrated with staff, fellowships are useful for developing the capabilities of an organization’s workforce. Other federal statistical agencies have found user groups to be an invaluable resource for building internal capacity without necessarily adding headcount. Each of these mechanisms can work as force multipliers, replenishing and renewing an agency’s workforce.
Finally, when the program office receives a greater benefit from NCES services than does NCES, an argument can be made for reimbursable arrangements. Additionally, reimbursable work may be one way for NCES to get more resources and staff without using its IES allocations. Reimbursable arrangements also provide a mechanism for documenting and assessing future value and priorities.
As a note of caution, other organizations have suffered from attempting to substitute a researcher or statistician with a data scientist; it is tempting to assume that a data scientist will easily acquire the necessary statistical expertise and content knowledge. In reality, understanding educational tests, psychometrics, and related measurements is a skillset that requires years of training and experience to employ effectively. Similarly, content expertise in areas such as adult literacy or early childhood education requires an advanced degree and years of professional experience in relevant settings, such as classrooms. Fortunately, NCES is housed within IES—an institute that possesses deep content expertise in extremely diverse contexts. By expanding and cultivating partnerships within IES, NCES will be better positioned to identify and integrate the specialized content expertise needed to supplement and inform the Center’s technical work. Such partnerships, however, need to be actively curated by NCES.
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29 See U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Policy, Data, Oversight: Hiring Information, Intergovernment Personnel Act. Available: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/hiringinformation/intergovernment-personnel-act/ [March 2022].
30 Ibid.
EVALUATE POSSIBLE ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES AND FEATURES AS PART OF STRATEGIC PLANNING
Organizational recommendations are often dependent on an organization’s strategic plan. However, some important activities can happen as part of the strategic-planning process and others can happen independently.
RECOMMENDATION 5-1: NCES should utilize contractors and creative staffing arrangements to work collaboratively with staff to build internal capacity. To enhance resilience, NCES should also explore greater use of flexible contract types, stronger incentives for contractors to adopt cost-effective innovations, and performance-based requirements.
The panel recommends that NCES establish a process for systematically reviewing its contract activities and functions, with an eye towards identifying those that need to be insourced within the Center to meet NCES’s medium- and long-term strategic objectives. In addition, future contracts need to be written such that information from contracted activities flows into NCES’s brain trust to build the Center’s capacity. Such contracts may require high levels of integration and coordination across activities and functions. NCES may benefit from master agreements that are indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity31 and that issue task orders for which qualified vendors compete, in lieu of separate contracts for distinct chunks of work. This approach could both reduce the burden of writing and managing individual contracts and could generate a vetted bench of candidates that the Center could draw from when necessary. The panel further recognizes that the model of “renting” contract staff, who are embedded within and function as Center staff, has historically been beneficial and could be continued in some form in the future.
NCES will need to carefully consider which activities it wants to contract out versus complete in-house. Whether and how hiring practices change depends on NCES’s new strategic plan. Adjusting the contractor-to-FTE ratio or shifting from temporary hires to a larger, often competitive, centralized pool of applicants will take time and may have fiscal and legal ramifications. The National Institute of Statistical Science’s graphics report (NISS, 2021a) discusses phases of bringing interactive visualization expertise in-house and offers an example of the actions NCES could consider when a skills gap exists. Supporting this perspective, a recent retail trade study used firm-level data available at the U.S. Census Bureau to
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31 Federal Acquisition Regulation § 16.504. Available: https://www.acquisition.gov/far/16.504 [March 2022].
examine the evolution of business operations (Ding et al., 2020). The study found that, in recent years, large manufacturing firms have tended to move towards in-house professional services (including scientific and professional services) rather than outsourcing. These firms find that insourcing saves money, makes the firms more nimble, and keeps innovations in-house.
Regardless, as discussed in Chapter 2, NCES should seek to better integrate its work with IES and avoid being siloed from the remainder of IES. Currently, IES conducts evaluative work that is outside of NCES’s authority but that could be supported by NCES in terms of data and statistical expertise, and IES has offices, such as the new data sciences group, that provide many opportunities for collaboration. The panel advises that NCES, in collaboration with IES, explore ways to bring together grant-making authority and contracts for producing statistical products, such that IES and its centers can work collaboratively with NCES to generate ideas, test those ideas in the research space, and subsequently operationalize those ideas.
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