Funded through a contract with The Institute for Community Inclusion (ICI), University of Massachusetts Boston, IATP provides technical assistance and system programming services to support day-to-day and aggregate data reporting for Assistive Technology Act Section 4 grantees (56 State AT Programs).
This contractual service began in 2011 with general data technical assistance services provided to all grantees along with the development and ongoing management of an online day-to-day data management system available for all State AT Programs to use for collection and reporting of required Annual Progress Report data needed for the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) Management Information System. This day-to-day data system was named the National Assistive Technology Act Data System (NATADS).
With the 2015 administrative transfer of the AT Act Programs from RSA to the Administration for Community Living (ACL), use of RSA’s Management Information System ended and NATADS was expanded to collect end of year aggregate data for the required Annual Progress Report (APR) for all 56 grantees. In 2022, ACL provided supplemental funding for a State Plan for AT component to be added to NATADS that is used by all 56 grantees. This resulted in three separate parts of NATADS, a day-to-day component, an aggregate component, and a State Plan component. All these components have been and are maintained through each subsequent contract between ICI and IATP.
The day-to-day component is available to any grantee for daily data collection and management. It is closely aligned with the aggregate system and will automatically populate summed data into the aggregate system for each APR cycle. The individual data records in the day-to-day system include all the validation rules needed to ensure data fidelity when summed and reported in the APR. Currently, over half of all grantees utilize some or all of the NATADS day-to-day component. If you are an AT Act Section 4 grantee interested in using the system, contact Vance Dhooge at IATP for more information.
The aggregate component is used by all 56 Section 4 grantees to report required Annual Progress Report data. NATADS has robust back-end data analysis tools and standard reports that are generated to provide information used for multiple national reports, including the required Report to Congress. Numeric data from the aggregate APR is exported to ICI for uploading into the CATADA Data Portal which provides extensive historical and current data that can be queried and reviewed in standardized and customized tables. Qualitative data is also exported and shared in a variety of venues on the CATADA website.
The State Plan for AT component is used by all 56 Section 4 grantees to submit an application for AT Act funding. An initial State Plan is submitted every three years and annual updates are done in the other two years of the three year cycle. The State Plan provides a description of the authorized AT Act activities each grantee will implement with federal funding. As with the APR, State Plan data from NATADS is exported to ICI for uploading into the CATADA Data Portal which makes the data publicly available in standardized tables.
IATP staff for CATADA includes:
- Diane Cordry Golden who provides data technical assistance and support for grantee data collection and reporting and supports back-end data analysis and report development; and
- Vance Dhooge who is the primary programmer and manager for both components of NATADS and provides training and ongoing support for those grantees using the day-to-day component.