Tennessee

The Tennessee Governor has five priorities: education and workforce development, iobs and rural economic development, transparent and efficient government, Healthier Tennessee, and public safety and criminal justice reform. Specific metrics tied to the success of each priority area are publicly displayed on Transparent TN. The Governor’s five priorities set the foundation for each cabinet-level department to create their strategic plans, which will drive department operations through December 2023. In addition, through Tennessee’s Office of Customer Focused Government (CFG), statewide and agency goals are aligned in a deliberative operational planning process. CFG plans serve as the operational plans tracking key customer service areas and operations for each department. Each department’s operational goals and subsequent performance measures must focus on key service offerings (customer-facing services); budget, finance, and accounting; human capital and talent management; technology systems and equipment; and legal, audit, and risk management.

Issue Areas: Economic Mobility, Education, Workforce

Tennessee’s Governmental Accountability Act of 2013 established a statewide performance management system, Transparent Tennessee, managed by the Office of Customer Focused Government (CFG). The Office of Customer Focused Government and the state’s Chief Operating Officer continuously track and monitor performance data and report publicly available operational performance on Transparent Tennessee’s dashboards, which include specific goals, targets, and performance data for each of the state’s strategic priorities. The site also includes state fiscal data as well as OpenMaps, which showcases key metrics and an interactive budget tool.

Issue Areas: Child Welfare, Criminal Justice, Economic Mobility, Education, Health, Workforce

The Tennessee Governor’s 2020 and 2021 State of the State addresses highlighted the state’s evidence-based budgeting practices and data-driven decisions to improve results for residents. During the budget development process in 2019, the Governor’s Office provided a memo to the press introducing the state’s new evidence-based budgeting efforts. The Office of Evidence and Impact, which leads the state’s evidence-based budgeting practices, provides evidence-based budgeting trainings in preparation for new budgets. It also provides robust program inventory training so agencies learn about the benefits of measuring meaningful outcomes and using evidence to support and improve programs.

The Tennessee Employee Suggestion Award Program fosters state employee-driven innovation and improvement of government operations or services, including cost savings. Staff who propose innovative solutions receive a cash award when the interventions realized savings equal 15% of the annual savings realized in a fiscal year (maximum award of $100,000). This has led to improvement in procedures on soil and water inspections and use of digital services by the Department of Labor.

Issue Areas: Economic Mobility, Education, Equity, Health, Workforce

The Tennessee Office of Customer Focused Government (CFG), in addition to overseeing the state’s performance management processes, leads innovation statewide. The mission of the office is to “drive innovation and operational efficiency to benefit [residents].” CFG staff consult with agencies to run a variety of projects across the enterprise that foster innovation and continuous improvement, specifically finding opportunities to improve outcomes pertaining to their operations and how they serve their customers.

Issue Areas: Child Welfare, Economic Mobility, Education, Health, Workforce

In June 2020, Tennessee hired a Chief Data Officer (CDO) within the Office of Strategic Technology Solutions (STS) as part of Finance and Administration. The CDO has developed a data management and open data strategy and a statewide framework for data governance. The CDO has developed a future state architecture for the data platform to modernize the way data is shared and accessed internally across agencies and externally.

Additionally, the state has a Data Governance Committee to improve data quality, promote data sharing, and support deploying a statewide data governance framework. The Data Governance Committee is responsible for contributing to the statewide and agency data policies, practices, and implementation, from the regular review and analysis of practices that support and improve data quality to recommending training and workforce development programs as they relate to data and more. 

Tennessee leverages a longitudinal data system, P20 Connect TN, to link education, labor and workforce, human services, children’s services, and economic data at the individual level to produce insights for programmatic investments. For example, connected K-12, postsecondary, and labor data have enabled the study of the outcomes of the Tennessee Promise program that has informed program implementation both in Tennessee and in other states.

Issue Areas: Child Welfare, Economic Mobility, Education, Workforce

The Tennessee Education Research Alliance is a formal research partnership between the Tennessee Department of Education and Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education. Led by full-time staff and guided by a steering committee and advisory council, the Department and the University have co-created a research agenda that builds a body of knowledge to better position the state to make data-driven and evidence-based decisions. The Alliance conducts independent studies and directs external research to provide relevant and timely information to state policymakers across a variety of topic areas, including early reading, professional learning, and school improvement. Similarly, Tennessee Postsecondary Evaluation and Analysis Research Lab, established in 2017, is a joint effort by the Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research, Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development, and the Tennessee Higher Education Commission. The lab produces policy-relevant research on higher education and postsecondary.

Issue Areas: Education

Tennessee’s Office of Evidence and Impact (OEI) defined five evidence steps. The Office also completed inventories of state- and federally-funded programs in the areas of corrections, mental health, and substance abuse services as a part of the state’s evidence-based budgeting initiative. In 2021, OEI published program inventories for higher education, children’s services, and human services.

Tennessee’s Department of Education, Department of Higher Education, and Department of Health have conducted program evaluations independently or in partnership with universities that have directly impacted policy, budget, and programmatic decisions. For example, state evaluations on voluntary pre-K, financial aid for nontraditional postsecondary students, and the smoking cessation program for pregnant women have informed timing of program expansions or affirmed the continuation of programs with high confidence in results.

Issue Areas: Child Welfare, Criminal Justice, Education, Health

Beginning in FY20-21, the Tennessee budget instructions aligned the governor’s priorities with agency strategic plans. The instructions also encouraged agencies to invest in programs that were supported by research and evidence. The Cost Increase Request Form invited agencies to highlight their programs’ level of evidence based on the five evidence steps defined by the state’s Office of Evidence and Impact (OEI).

OEI reviews each submission and provides the Budget Office and Governor’s Office with a summary report for use in the budget process. The summary report objectively presents the evidentiary information and any available data for each programmatic budget request to inform the governor’s decisions regarding those requests. Departments may choose to leverage this information in presentations to the legislature.

While Tennessee does not have a statewide policy that governs evaluations and evaluation-related activities, Tennessee’s evidence framework and evidence-based budgeting process outline the steps agencies use to build evidence in support of decision-making. The framework includes a multi-tiered definition of evidence that captures program logic, performance data, and rigorous evaluation.

Issue Areas: Child Welfare, Criminal Justice, Economic Mobility, Education, Health, Workforce

In 2016, the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services introduced a performance-based contracting model that includes performance bands. Provider agencies are placed into one of three bands: high performance, mid-range (or average) performance, or lower performance. Providers are then paid based on their performance on specific metrics, resulting in a performance pay system with standardized outcomes, daily rates for contracts, metric definitions, and a measurement methodology. As part of this initiative, the agency distributes monthly performance reports to providers.

Issue Areas: Child Welfare

A 2007 Tennessee law defined evidence and required that 100% of the state’s juvenile justice funding be evidence-based beginning in 2012, with the exception of pilot programs that are building the evidence basis for research or theory-based interventions. As a result, the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services’ 2017 Request for Proposal for juvenile justice services, which provided funding through 2020, noted that “the Department of Children’s Services is prohibited from expending state funds on any juvenile justice program…unless the program is evidence-based.”

Issue Areas: Child Welfare, Criminal Justice