A data tool, developed by state employees, is transforming how the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE) protects students attending private colleges, vocational schools, and professional training programs. It allows staff to process thousands of institutional reports in seconds to inform enforcement activities.
The data model was designed by the California Office of Data and Innovation (ODI) over a 5-month partnership with BPPE. Using the tool, a dataset of over 7,570 institutional reports was analyzed in just 80 seconds. That’s a task that involved extensive manual review, consuming significant staff time.
As project champion, I saw how ODI improved the Bureau’s ability to process large volumes of data in real time, helping us make quicker decisions for our consumer protection enforcement efforts. The ODI team’s innovation and guidance were key to making this project a success and significantly improving our overall effectiveness.
—Elizabeth Elias, Enforcement Deputy Bureau Chief, BPPE
Key capabilities of the new system
- Risk identification: The tool analyzes each institution’s data to flag potential risks to students. It then ranks these risks by severity.
- Data quality assurance: The system automatically identifies missing fields and data inconsistencies.
- Enhanced efficiency: The tool works in near real-time. Staff can respond proactively to issues rather than discovering data-quality problems after the fact.
- Increased effectiveness: By automating manual data processing tasks, staff have more time for enforcement activities and deeper analysis.
With a centralized output dataset, BPPE staff can build upon existing analysis and also share insights across teams. The data used in the model reflect BPPE-approved institutions that serve over 500,000 students. This reusable approach creates efficiency and effectiveness.
The tool was developed as part of ODI’s Data Science Accelerator service. ODI helps departments solve business challenges with advanced analytics to make better business decisions through data.
At ODI, we believe data is most powerful when it’s actionable. By automating the heavy lifting of data processing, we’ve empowered BPPE to move away from manual spreadsheets and toward what they do best: protecting over 500,000 students. It wasn’t just about building a tool; it was about creating a faster path to student safety and institutional accountability.
—Kimberly Hicks, Deputy Director Advanced Analytics and Evaluation, ODI
Read the case study about this work.