If you follow the world of early childhood development, it’s likely you’re familiar with the abbreviation QRIS. And although people are familiar with the abbreviation, the term Quality Rating Improvement System is not well defined and varies widely from state to state.

Recently I received an e-mail from the National Child Care Information and Technical Assistance Center (NCCIC) asking if we have “worked with any states to link licensing data to quality rating system data.” And although I know NCCIC was looking for a short non-technical answer, the term “link” really threw me for a loop. Let me see if I can explain…

To begin, there are at least three groups in every state focused on quality improvement. It begins with licensing agencies that are responsible for ensuring child care providers meet “minimum standards”. However in recent years, many states have begun implementing programs that rate providers beyond minimum standards. These systems track the severity and frequency of violations, and attach a rating to the provider based on these and other quality indicators. The idea is fewer and less severe violations means higher quality.

The role of Resource and Referral Agencies, or R&Rs for short is to help parents with finding quality child care and other child care resources in their community. In some states QRIS is the responsibility of the R&Rs, in others it’s the responsibility of the licensing agency. In many states where QRIS resides with the R&Rs, quality assessments are conducted, which are in addition to licensing inspections. Quality assessments tend to focus more on the classroom materials, and interactions between caregivers and children, than on health and safety.

Then there are accrediting bodies, like the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), which function similar to licensing agencies in that they set minimum standards for accreditation, and similar to resource and referral agencies in that they focus on classroom materials and interactions. However unlike licensing and resource and referral, the process of becoming accredited is very time consuming and expensive, thus limiting the number of providers who go through the accreditation process. And just to make this all a bit more confusing to understand, many states use accreditation as the basis for quality, in addition to whatever other indicators or quality rating that may be in place.

So here’s my short non-technical answer to the question. We have definitely worked with states to “integrate” quality rating with licensing data; the term link just seems to oversimplify the connection between systems. In our experience, there’s always overlapping responsibility between stakeholders, which causes data ownership concerns, which in turn prevents simple linking of the data. I guess if there was a national standard for QRIS things may be different, but that’s a topic for another blog.

The most difficult thing to teach a developer, who is new to Outlier Technologies, is how to think differently about data entry. Most have some experience creating user interfaces (UI), but don’t have any experience creating UIs for field workers. About 10-years ago, I was working with a developer trying to get him to understand why the edit box he put on a screen wouldn’t work well for someone in the field. So I asked him to spend the rest of his day writing code with one-hand behind his back. Next day, he’d replaced the edit box with a more sophisticated data entry control.

It seems so simple. Field workers have to hold their computer in one hand while entering data with the other; one-handed data entry. Unfortunately if developers don’t understand how difficult data entry in the field can be, they end up creating UIs that don’t conform to the field worker. Now a days, it’s kind of fun to walk around the office and see developers testing applications with one-hand behind their back. I guess they’ve learned that a day testing with
one-hand is a lot easier than a day coding with one-hand.

I was sitting in my office last September, when a good friend e-mailed asking if I’d be interested in helping him figure out how to build a water tower in Nigeria. Now I don’t remember exactly what I was working on at the time, but I can remember thinking how hard can that be. Or in other words, building a water tower can’t be as difficult as what I’m working on right now…

My trip to Nigeria in February was definitively one of the most rewarding and humbling experiences of my life. I went to Nigeria thinking I knew a lot about construction and problem solving; what I learned was I still have a lot to learn.

The first step in building the water tower was setting up a block making machine for making cement block. Fortunately there were a couple Nigerian men from the village to do the work; otherwise we might still be there. Let me explain.

In Nigeria, there is very little in the way of building materials. Most of the available materials come from China, and look more like something from a junk yard than a Home Depot. So the Nigerian men setup the block making machine, which included two fifty gallon barrels to circulate water through the engine, using strips of rubber for the plumbing connections. Now as an American, this didn’t look quite right to me. We had provided some short pieces of tubing and hose clamps, but the Nigerian men wrapped the connections in rubber anyway. As they fired-up the block making machine for the first time, everything seemed to work fine. We made about 50 blocks that first day without any problems.

Once the blocks are made, they have to cure for one-day before they can come off the pallet, and another two days before they can be used. During this down time, I decided I’d try to improve on the Nigerian men’s assembly of the block making machine. I just figured they didn’t know how to use the tubing and hose clamps.

So I took the rubber strips off the pipes and began attaching the tubing. After about 30-minutes working to get the tubing to slide over the metal pipes, I was ready to attach the hose clamps and fire up the engine. Before I started the engine, I noticed the water level in the barrels was low, so I spent about ten-minutes filling the barrels with water. To my surprise, as the water level reached my newly installed tubing and hose clamp connections, water started to leak. Now I had watched the machine on the first day and there were no obvious leaks, but the water level in the barrels was low, so I figured the strips of rubber must have leaked and I just didn’t see it. So I tightened up the hose clamps, refitted the tubing, adjusted the angle of the pipes… About four-hours later, I still couldn’t achieve water tight connections. I could see the metal pipes weren’t exactly round, but figured the tubing and hose clamps would conform to the oval shape. Next thing I knew, I was reaching for the strips of rubber to stop the water leaks.

By the end of the day, I had removed the tubing and hose clamps, and reconnected the pipes using the strips of rubber. No leaks, I couldn’t believe it. As for the water level in the barrels; that evening as we were leaving, I noticed a group of children drinking water from the barrels…

What I was reminded of from this experience is I just can't walk into an unfamiliar environment, or another country, and think I can start solving problems. It's better to first listen and learn from others, and then look for opportunities to solve real problems.

And by the way, we did succeed in building a water tower for the children’s home. To read more about my trip to Nigeria, click here.

Since renaming the company from MAP Software to Outlier Technologies, a number of people have asked me, “What’s an outlier?” And then ask “Why did you name the company Outlier Technologies?”

The best way to explain the name is to start with the definition of an outlier. In mathematical or data terms, an outlier is a value that lies outside the other values in a data set. Another definition is a person or thing that lies outside the norm. But the reason for the name isn’t solely based on the definition; it’s also based on the way others tend to view, or deal with outliers.

For most, outliers are too difficult to deal with, are seen as mistakes, and are discard or combined with the majority. It's true outliers aren't easily understood, but what I've learned is understanding outliers just requires thinking that goes beyond conventional notions of what is relevant and important. So why spend so much time focusing on the outliers? This article from the Wall Street Journal may help put things into perspective.

I named the company Outlier Technologies because when I think of outliers, I think about people working outside an office; outside the norm. I think about outliers as potential solutions to the most difficult problems; the solutions others don’t see, or choose to ignore because they’re too difficult. But most importantly, I changed the named to Outlier Technologies because it’s who we are, and what we’ve been creating for more than 15-years.