By Synectics

Synectics and Insight Policy Research: Supporting the USDA’s Mission

In September 2017, Synectics will start supporting the USDA Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). We are teamed with Insight Policy Research, Inc., which will serve as prime. Synectics will be designing and implementing a national integrated database for FNS. We will build a data collection system for statewide EBT information and standardize the data for analytical use; in short, we will be helping FNS to make their data meaningful. This will improve FNS’s ability to examine factors that contribute to WIC program enrollment and evaluate program impacts on behavioral and health outcomes.

Synectics has a proven record on data managing and analytics, particularly in helping to make complex information accessible to end users. We managed over 60 million health data files, including admissions and discharges in the states, territories, and tribes, in a behavioral health database for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and we are currently providing enterprise data warehousing and business intelligence (EDW/BI) support using OBIEE, Tableau, and innovative dashboards for the National Science Foundation.

Our teaming partner, Insight Policy Research, Inc. has a strong reputation for designing research protocols to obtain needed data from hard-to-reach or underserved populations. Some of their showcased projects are the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Quality Control, in which they performed in-person interviews with individuals who discontinued SNAP participation because of a refusal or failure to comply with the SNAP Quality Control process, and a national evaluation of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s ConnectHome initiative, which seeks to bring high-speed internet access to families in public housing.