About LINC
Background
In 2017, the State of Colorado and the Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab at the University of Denver partnered up to design and launch the Linked Information Network of Colorado (LINC). LINC is a collaborative based out of the Governor’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) that supports timely and cost-efficient research, evaluation, and analytics. LINC has the ability to integrate data across state and local agencies including human services, health, labor and employment, higher education, housing, K-12 education, and criminal justice.
The Power of Data: How the Linked Information Network of Colorado (LINC) is Bringing Cross-System Data to Prevention Conversations
Policy & Practice, October 2020
Local Control
Colorado policy leaders and data science partners launched LINC with the recognition that the state is devoted to a “local control” government approach and holds a strong commitment to the protection of individual privacy. Given this environment, a reasonable question frequently arises: how has LINC successfully brought partners from so many disparate public systems to the table to commit to purposeful data sharing?
“Secret Sauce”
The “secret sauce” for LINC has not been a technical solution or a legislative mandate. In fact, during its launch phase LINC has operated on an annual budget of less than $350,000, is entirely voluntary, and produces actionable analytics with minimal technology investments. Rather, the success of LINC is its dedication to a partnership model that is flexible, respectful, and responsive at every step.
Early Days
The LINC design team spent considerable time one-on-one with agency leadership, data privacy officers, and other relevant staff to review a proposed governance approach and tweak it to the preferences of potential early adopters. With technical assistance from Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy (AISP), LINC borrowed best practices from other state and county cross-system data solutions to create a proposed model for Colorado.
Federated Model
The LINC collaborative landed on a federated model where each partner maintains complete control of their data until they approve a project and send data to the centralized linking hub for integration and anonymization for end users.
Legal Framework
Responding to the input collected from potential partners, the LINC Director developed a three-tier legal framework designed to ensure a common, high-level commitment to collaboration among LINC data partners while providing flexibility in lower-level agreements to allow data partners to meet their legal obligations. Lastly, LINC performed no arm twisting or teeth pulling to bring data partners to the table. Rather, the team fostered relationships and asked public officials how data sharing could help solve persistent problems.
The Office of Information Technology supports the technical aspects of LINC’s work while the Colorado Lab supports LINC’s business, data partner, and client needs.
Meet the Team
