The SC Department of Employment and Workforce (DEW) and the SC Office of Research and Statistics (ORS) recently partnered to share unemployment data for research purposes to ultimately improve the employability and overall quality of South Carolina’s workforce.

The DEW Executive Director, John L. Finan, and the ORS Director, Bobby Bowers, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the objective of allowing the agencies to share data to improve the employability of the state’s workforce; provide information showing the level of effectiveness of state agency programs; and to conduct research on the links between education, training, employment and health outcomes.

The cooperation between DEW and ORS is a result of legislation passed last year that charged the DEW with collaborating with ORS to develop and continuously improve a customer service portal, or data warehouse. The benefits of the collaboration include increased interagency integration and record sharing to allow state agencies the ability to go to one source for data.

“This cooperation between the two agencies will benefit South Carolina’s citizens because the aggregate data that will be shared will allow us to have benchmarks and set goals to help people find jobs based on hard numbers,” said Finan. “With the help of this data sharing agreement, our agency will have access to research that will help us become more efficient in ensuring that people who want to work can find the right jobs.”

Further, the MOU illustrates continued cooperation and increased efficiency among state agencies. The partnership between DEW and ORS will improve and modernize the service for the state’s unemployed by building a long-term relationship to enable a secure means for transferring data