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UID:pretalx-2026-8LAW8K@conferences.acspri.org.au
DTSTART;TZID=AEST:20261125T153000
DTEND;TZID=AEST:20261125T154500
DESCRIPTION:The focus of administrative data collection for legal assistanc
 e services\, as with many other sectors\, is often about meeting reporting
  requirements of funding bodies. There are missed opportunities to use rou
 tinely collected data to answer research questions. This presentation draw
 s on the Law and Justice Foundation of NSW's work with community legal cen
 tres across New South Wales. The project aims to describe how community le
 gal centres statewide respond to legal need\, where gaps in provision appe
 ar\, and how service utilisation compares with available indicators of leg
 al need. Following pilot analyses for a subset of centres\, the current ph
 ase includes engagement with 32 community legal centres in NSW and unit re
 cord data for more than 100\,000 services that were provided in 2024-25.  
 \n\nThe methodological core of the project is an iterative quality assuran
 ce process conducted with each centre individually\, in which data is reco
 nciled against other sources and apparent anomalies are investigated. Each
  centre receives a draft report accompanied by queries about unusual value
 s and questions about ordinary recording practice. Their responses inform 
 a final report for the centre and influence how data is incorporated into 
 a statewide analysis.  \n\nLessons from this process have wide application
  for research using service data. \n\nFirst\, the capability to produce an
 d use data is distributed very unevenly across providers. Some centres hav
 e staff with dedicated data responsibilities\, others depend on one person
  with many competing duties\, and several had not previously seen their ow
 n data analysed. Supporting providers to collect and maintain quality data
  is a fundamental step in using service data meaningfully\, and one with s
 ubstantial resourcing implications for projects of this kind. Engagement i
 n this type of project may also increase data capability. Responding to qu
 eries requires staff to look closely at their own data and to articulate t
 acit practices. Capability is therefore not only a precondition for this w
 ork but one of its outputs. \n\nSecond\, quality assurance of this kind ma
 y be better understood as knowledge production than as data cleaning. Enga
 gement with providers is essential to understanding what service data repr
 esents. Variations in data recording practices between services may be err
 ors but may also reflect differences in service design and client cohorts.
  Analysis across providers requires harmonisation of data\, which risks ob
 scuring these differences. Where harmonisation involves a loss of specific
 ity or nuance\, this should inform interpretation of the harmonised data. 
 \n\nThird\, understanding how services record data is crucial for the type
  of meaningful interpretation needed to measure outcomes. This is a live q
 uestion in legal assistance\, where work is currently underway to develop 
 sector-wide outcome measures. Outcomes already recorded cannot be interpre
 ted without knowing how\, when and for which clients they were captured. W
 here outcome monitoring is being designed\, current recording practice ind
 icates what could realistically be collected\, and the support providers w
 ould need to do so consistently. These issues are likely to be familiar to
  anyone working with frontline service data\, whether the interest is in t
 he services themselves\, in the populations they reach\, or in the data as
  a resource for wider analysis. Across these lessons\, the limits of admin
 istrative data in a given context are better treated as research findings 
 in their own right\, rather than only as limitations to be noted.
DTSTAMP:20261013T065916Z
LOCATION:Holme Room
SUMMARY:What service data tells us: Quality assurance\, harmonisation and p
 ractitioner capability in legal assistance - Emily Kothe
URL:https://conferences.acspri.org.au/2026/talk/8LAW8K/
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