Officials pitch statewide workforce ‘data trust’ and early participation in federal PSEO coalition

At a committee hearing, Simone Haskell, executive director of the Office of Corporate Strategy and Development, presented a December study that recommends exploring a statewide workforce 'data trust' to break agency data silos and strengthen long‑term workforce decision‑making.

"We need more people, we need more housing, we need more businesses," Haskell said, arguing a shared repository could improve accountability and help evaluate program impact across state government and community partners. The report does not recommend immediate adoption of a single state-run trust; it instead urges the legislature and agencies to evaluate alternative partnerships and multistate collaboratives while the Agency of Digital Services (ADS) builds internal capacity.

Josiah, introduced by committee staff as the chief data and artificial intelligence director at the Agency of Digital Services, described a technical foundation ADS completed in December: a statewide 'data lakehouse' that combines a data lake for rapid ingestion with a data warehouse for integrated reporting. "Since three weeks ago, we've begun bringing data from Department of Health," he said, and ADS is cataloging datasets, documenting known quality issues and creating controlled 'views' that require data‑sharing agreements before other agencies or staff can access aggregated information.

ADS staff emphasized data governance work — drafting data catalogs, quality qualifiers and sharing agreements — and said datasets are initially stored in separate buckets with access controlled until formal agreements create shared views. ADS estimated the platform will enable faster cross‑agency analysis but warned full dataset onboarding and governance will take time and investment.

Committee members pressed two recurring concerns: inconsistent demographic questions across programs that limit cross‑tabulation and anecdotal reports that some residents and providers are declining to participate in federal surveys (a "chilling effect"). An unidentified committee member asked, "How are our crosstabs — are the same demographic questions underpinning all of the data across these agencies?" Josiah said ADS will work with the Office of Racial Equity to publish a standard package of demographic questions (the office expects to release standards in 2026) and will attempt to quantify changes in federal survey participation.

As an immediate, lower‑cost step, presenters recommended Vermont consider joining the Post‑Secondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO) coalition, a U.S. Census Bureau multistate project that links census earnings data with higher‑education outcomes. Presenters said PSEO participation requires college and university cooperation but no state appropriation, and they showed dashboard examples (Maine) that break out earnings and employment by institution, degree level and program cohort.

No formal committee action was taken. Presenters recommended continued monitoring of ADS work, pursuing low‑cost multistate collaborations where feasible, and returning with updates on governance milestones and efforts to measure any participation decline in federal datasets.