Through D4AD, the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget (DTMB) has created two Career Explorer tools.

• The Jobseeker Career Explorer tool is designed for jobseekers and is integrated into the statewide labor exchange system.

• The Case Manager Career Explorer tool is designed for case managers and is integrated into the American Job Center case management system.

Both tools bring together multiple workforce, education, and training data sources to provide jobseekers with personalized career and education recommendations. Additionally, the Case Manager Career Explorer uses administrative data that combines participant-level workforce program data and UI wage records to inform predictive analytics. These predictive analytics allow case managers to provide jobseekers with additional insights, such as the benefits of receiving training and their likelihood of reemployment.

To help ensure that workforce development training providers are providing quality training for Michigan jobseekers, the state now collects and publicly shares outcome data from private training providers, in addition to the data they already collected from public institutions through a new API.

DTMB relied heavily on collaboration from its partners for the successful development of the Career Explorer tools: Michigan Works! Southwest (which also served as the pilot partner for the tools), Michigan’s Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, and the Upjohn Institute of Employment Research. Through these partnerships, Michigan was able to leverage their knowledge of the target population and gain crucial buy-in from case managers, both in the pilot region and statewide.

The strong leadership and collaborative environment enjoyed by the Michigan team allowed it to overcome challenges presented by COVID-19 shutdowns and furloughs and securing vendors through a state RFP process. Through this work, the team has contributed to the broader conversation about projects that employ a human-centered design approach to tool development.  The state’s current procurement process, which operated in a traditional linear model based on identifying project specs, designing tools based on those specs, and then moving to implementation, was not well suited for the human-centered design approach that relies on continuous feedback and adaptation throughout the design and implementation process.  As a side benefit of this project, the State of Michigan has created more flexible procurement rules that will allow for the inclusion of human-centered design.

The long-term goal of Michigan’s project is to improve employment outcomes of underrepresented and low-income individuals served by federal-state workforce programs, a need that has grown even more acute with the economic recession driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. The team will monitor a number of metrics related to improved economic outcomes and plans to add additional outcome measurements as a part of its membership in the Administrative Data Research Facility (ADRF), which facilitates the cross-state data sharing.