Literacy practitioners have been collecting data for many years. However, that data has been used to varying degrees in terms of program planning and evaluation. Implementing CIPMS requires literacy agencies to become more deliberate and focused about how they are collecting data, what kind of data they are collecting and how they are using the data they collect.

Full implementation of a CIPMS does not happen quickly. It takes time to collect enough data to provide a proper analysis of an agency’s performance. As your agency works towards full implementation of CIPMS, you can approach this in a number of ways. Here are some suggestions:

1. Your agency can start collecting and tracking data in a deliberate and consistent manner and be prepared to start analyzing it and responding to your findings at some time in the future (three months, six months, a year, etc.). This doesn’t mean that you are delaying CIPMS involvement but rather that you believe you do not yet have enough data to analyze and to set targets. Your plan of action for the immediate future may be to improve your data collection techniques and/or the recording of that data.
2. Alternatively, you can look back at the data you have already collected and identify trends and issues based on past data, determine your response to your findings, develop an action plan and begin monitoring and working with that plan now. This will take a focused effort and considerable time because you will have to go back in the records, and you may or may not have collected and tracked data in a consistent manner. However, this approach will provide you with past statistics and trends that you can use immediately to set targets and to begin to take steps towards program improvement. The point here isn’t simply to collect data, but rather to use information that you already have to help you make decisions about program improvements.
3. The third option falls somewhere between the first two approaches. You might not be prepared, or able, to analyze past data for all areas of program accountability. Therefore, you might choose one or two areas of concern (e.g., learner recruitment, learner attendance or volunteer recruitment) to examine based on past results, while choosing one or two other issues to start focusing on from this point forwards.

How you choose to work towards more fully implementing CIPMS in your agency will depend on where you are now, available staff time and your main areas of focus for the coming year. Whichever you choose, remember to keep it manageable and to give yourself time to incorporate new processes and procedures into the daily operations of the agency where you work.

There are four main areas of focus in data collection:

1. Who came to the program? (straightforward statistics, i.e., age, source of income, gender)
2. What did they do while they were at the program? (attendance reports, progress reports, learner skills gains, other learner achievements)
3. Where did they go when they left the program? (referral statistics, exit and follow-up statistics)
4. What difference (impact) did the program make? (harder to quantify, because it is longer-term, and includes other influences beyond the literacy agency)