Every state wants to make better decisions with data.

Whether the goal is understanding workforce outcomes, improving education policy, evaluating health and human services programs, or measuring the long-term impact of public investments, administrative data has become one of the most valuable strategic assets any state or federal agency can leverage. 

Public agencies are structured to pass citizens from one milestone to the next. Early childhood programs prepare toddlers for kindergarten. High schools equip teens for college or trades. Higher education and training programs provide adults with the knowledge and skills to successfully enter careers. No single agency handles the entire pipeline; each operates as one piece of a large, often unaligned puzzle.

Across the country, leaders increasingly recognize that linking these data across agencies can reveal important insights. Agencies deploy programs based on what they believe works, yet they frequently lose track of the individuals they serve the moment they cross an institutional boundary. This makes it difficult to know if their efforts had the desired outcomes. Without cross-agency and even cross-region data sharing, feedback is often inconsistent, nonexistent, or based on isolated and often dated anecdotes. 

Yet while nearly everyone agrees on the value of data sharing, many initiatives take years to launch or never move beyond the planning stage. The common assumption is that the biggest challenge is technical. Agencies expect the hard part will be integrating different systems, securely transferring data and classified information, or matching records across databases built decades apart.

In our experience, those are rarely the barriers that determine success.

In an environment that requires collaboration, the real challenge is building trust. We have seen this time and time again at Coleridge and we hear this firsthand from our partners who do similar work in the field.

Successful data sharing is ultimately about creating an environment where agencies understand their legal authority, governance structures are clearly defined, privacy protections are well understood, and every participant has confidence that data will be used responsibly. Great technology enables collaboration, but trust is what makes collaboration possible. In other words, the barriers are organizational and not just technical

Another primary challenge for agencies beginning a data-sharing journey is how quickly technical questions give way to larger structural and operational ones.

Can we legally share this data?

Who approves new research projects within secure data systems?

Who remains responsible for the data after it's shared or placed in a secure platform?

How are privacy risks managed and mitigated?

What happens when multiple agencies have different interpretations of the law?

These questions often become far more complex than selecting software or building secure infrastructure. The question is rarely whether agencies can or cannot link their data, but how they can do it in a way that provides actionable insights without sacrificing individual privacy.

Building trust and operational questions are two of the primary challenges of sharing administrative data but there are a host of other matters to address in a data sharing partnership. 

Timely Legal Engagement

Another hurdle that hampers progress is involving legal counsel too late in the process, after months of planning have already taken place. By that point, agency project teams may have developed technical solutions, defined research objectives, identified partners, and drafted governance models before attorneys are asked to review agreements. Legal teams are then asked to evaluate a nearly finished proposal instead of helping shape a framework that is legally sustainable from the beginning. General counsels and other legal support should be viewed as partners from the beginning.

When several agencies participate, multiple legal departments may interpret the same statutes differently, creating additional rounds of reviews and negotiations. Early legal engagement changes the entire trajectory of a project and it allows agencies to identify statutory authority, clarify privacy obligations and requirements, define governance responsibilities, and resolve questions before they become barriers. Rather than acting as gatekeepers at the end of the process, legal and privacy professionals become partners in designing legal and governance frameworks that everyone can support.

Modern Collaboration Bumps Against Outdated Legislation

Many of the laws governing administrative data were written long before cloud computing, secure research environments, sophisticated matching processes, or multi-agency collaborations became commonplace.

As a result, agencies may have clear authority to collect and use their own data but lack explicit statutory authority to share it through trusted third-party intermediaries or modern secure research environments. Even when appropriate privacy protections exist, uncertainty around legal authority can make agencies understandably cautious. This isn't necessarily a technology problem or even a policy disagreement. It's often a question of whether existing legislation has kept pace with how governments want to collaborate today.

Governance makes responsible sharing possible

Because of these realities, successful initiatives tend to focus on governance as much as technology. Across our work with states at Coleridge, we've seen the same ingredients appear again and again in successful models. 

• Executive leadership establishes a shared vision across agencies. 
• Legal and privacy stakeholders are involved from the outset. 
• Governance processes clearly define who approves projects, who can access data, and how disclosure risks are managed. 
• Standardized agreements reduce duplication, clarify expectations, and shorten the time needed to process agreements and provide access to needed data.
• Secure technical infrastructures allow agencies and other data stewards to house data in an environment that allows them to maintain control over approved uses without relying on repeated, time-consuming transfers of sensitive data to answer individual questions

Perhaps most importantly, data owners retain confidence that they and not the technology platform remain in control of how their data is used.

That confidence and assurance becomes the foundation upon which collaboration and trust can grow.

Maryland provides a compelling example. In 2026, the state enacted legislation authorizing the Maryland Longitudinal Data System (MLDS) Center to securely share data through a qualified third-party research environment, enabling participation in Coleridge’s Democratizing Our Data Challenge with Washington, D.C., and Virginia. Our own Vice President of Data Enclave Operations, Jonathan Mills, provided formal testimony before the Maryland Senate Committee on Education, Energy, and Environment and the House Ways and Means Committee, highlighting the importance of secure, FedRAMP-authorized research environments. By establishing a modern legal framework for secure, cross-state collaboration, Maryland demonstrated that advancing data sharing often requires updating governance and legislative authority, not simply deploying new technology.

More broadly, the organizations that move fastest are rarely those with the most sophisticated technical infrastructure. They are the organizations that invest early in relationships, governance, and alignment. They spend time building trust among legal counsel, privacy officers, agency leadership, researchers, and data owners before tackling technical implementation. That investment often pays dividends for years because it creates repeatable processes rather than one-time agreements.

The Conversation is Changing

The conversation around administrative data sharing has evolved considerably over the past several years. Not long ago, many discussions centered on a single question: Can we share data?

Today, forward-looking states are asking a much more productive question: How do we share data responsibly, securely, and for the benefit of our communities?