Oregon Integrated Client Services (ICS) Data

Department of Human Services (DHS) Oregon Health Authority (OHA) Office of Forecasting, Research, and Analysis (OFRA)

Individual-level data on clients served by most OHA and DHS programs. ICS compiles information from a variety of data sources and de-duplicates client records from within and across programs. ICS data include eligibility, enrollment, and service episode information in addition to geographic and employment information.

Unit of Observation:
Individual
Personally Identifiable Information Available for Linking:
Yes
Geography:
Oregon, United States of America
Years Available:
2000 - present
Cost:
Free
Frequency of Updates:
Monthly
Universe:

Universe Individuals enrolled in most OHA and DHS programs or involved in the Oregon Employment Department, Department of Corrections, Department of Education, and Oregon Housing and Community Services. See agencies here.

Access

Individual-level, de-identified Integrated Client Services (ICS) data are available to researchers by application. Researchers must first reach out to the individual data providers to discover where the data resides, to get information about the variables, and to complete a Data Use Agreement (DUA) if necessary. Afterwards, the researcher can reach out to ICS to ask for the data elements of the integrated dataset, presenting the DUAs from the data providers, IRB approval if needed, and after completing an ICS DUA, provided directly by ICS.  The ICS Data Use Committee reviews applications that include all relevant details of the research project, and reviews that all researchers that will have access to the data have signed the DUA. Further, ICS will obtain approval from all data providers that will be contributing data to the data set, and finally ICS will create the datasets and provide the final copy of the data to the requestor.

Timeline for Access

The timeline for requests involving multiple data sources varies. In some cases, a meeting between the researchers requesting data and ICS will take place to determine the logistics of creating the dataset. When the research project is completed and access is no longer needed, DHS and OHA must be immediately notified

Lag Time

Unknown.

Cost

There is no fee associated with accessing data from ICS.  Only pay for costs associated to data access

Linking

Preparation phase:
1.    Researchers reach out to data providers, including programs and agencies that own the data to learn more about the data variables.
2.    Researchers reach out to ICS to determine how to link the integrated data sets. This could be done through a meeting between requestors, ICS, and data providers. Data providers need to communicate limitations with requested data elements.
Data Matching:
1.    ICS will receive source identifiers for study universe. In the case where some individuals in the study are not part of ICS's client index, full names and demographics of individuals are required for ICS to perform a probabilistic or fuzzy match.
○    Where possible, ICS will report record linkage metrics to assist researchers in assessing whether a record linkage project is of sufficiently high accuracy to support research needs
2.    ICS creates a Study Identifier for each individual.
3.    ICS uses its client index to connect source identifiers of data sources to everyone in the study.
4.    Each data provider will receive a study crosswalk from ICS consisting of the Study Identifier and their Source Identifier.
5.    Each provider uses their Source Identifier in the ICS provided crosswalk to attach the requested data elements.
6.    Each provider removes the identifiable Source Identifier and sends de-identified source dataset to the researcher who requested the data with the Study Identifier attached.
7.    The researcher receives the source datasets and can use the Study Identifier to connect the different datasets.

Identifiers Available for Linking

  • Date of birth
  • First, middle, and last name
  • Gender/sex
  • Social Security number
  • If linking data with some specific programs, additional fields may increase the match rate, including:
  • Race and ethnicity
  • Language
  • Street Address
  • City
  • County
  • State
  • Zip Code

Linking to Outside Data Sources

Researchers can also discuss with ICS if other specific fields are available for linking.

Data Contents

ICS contains demographic, geographic, and employment information on clients of most DHS and OHA programs (e.g., Vocational Rehabilitation, Aging and People with Disabilities, Healthy Kids Connect, etc.) in addition to data from the Oregon Employment Department, Department of Corrections, Department of Education, and Oregon Housing and Community Services. Since the original function of ICS data was to inform caseload forecasting, the data is organized around service episode history. 

Partial List of Variables

Address, census tract ID, county ID, county name, state senate district, state congressional district, federal congressional district, school district ID, DHS district, age, rural/urban flag, homeless status, person type (e.g., head of household), date of birth/death, age at death, gender, race, ethnicity, preferred language, tribal affiliation, total earnings by quarter, hours worked per quarter, service start and end dates.

J-PAL Randomized Evaluations Using this Data Set

Unknown.

Last reviewed