In a move that should enhance its ability to make the case for the effectiveness and impact of its funding, LSC has announced several changes to its grantee reporting.  The highlights:

• Grantees will be required to report total numbers of people in households served. (This is an obvious enhanced measure of total human impact.)
• Grantees will be reporting the total number of cases involving domestic violence. (This expands on prior data collection of actual domestic violence vases.  Cases may well involve domestic violence without actually being correctly categorized as primarily a DV case.)
• Grantees will also be reporting the number of those served who have served in the military, reflecting an increasing focus on this constituency.
• They are simplifying online services reporting, collecting only unique visitors and “the number of actual downloads of web items, separated into downloads of Community Legal Education items and downloads of Pro Se items. “
• There will be a distinction in the data between pro bono and compensated private attorney involvement cases.
• In order to make the changes less burdensome, they are eliminating certain data collection, including of media outreach.
• These changes are being rolled in on a schedule designed to be realistic and minimally burdensome for grantees.

I note that there has been some in the community some desire for clarity about some of these changes, and am confident that LSC will be forthcoming with this.

Overall, LSC should be praised for its focus on data that is meaningful and useful.  I am hopeful that this presages a commitment to making this a more data-driven community.