2024 VSO Excellence Award Winner: Ramsey County

The VSO Excellence Awards from Tyler honor the exceptional efforts of Veteran Services Officers (VSOs) in supporting those who have served in the U.S. armed forces. This year, we’re proud to spotlight the Veteran Services of Ramsey County, Minnesota, which received the Awesome Organization award for their unwavering commitment to veterans in their community.

Identifying Critical Data Gaps

In 2020, Ramsey County’s Veteran Services served 3,042 veterans or dependents, but more than half of those client records were missing race data. This hindered the department’s ability to disaggregate survey and evaluation results by race, making it impossible to analyze service delivery through a racial equity lens.

This also challenged the agency’s ability to adhere to Ramsey County’s Advancing Racial Equity Policy, which requires that the highest quality of race data be used to inform performance monitoring, decision-making, budget proposals, and policy development.

Enhancing Data Quality

In January 2023, the agency’s planning and evaluation analyst coordinated with the agency director to address these critical data gaps. Using Tyler’s VetraSpec application, agency staff would identify client records that were missing race data as part of their monthly performance measure dashboard update. Staff would then conduct research or reach out to the clients on that list to obtain and enter the missing data.

Improving Services

By effectively utilizing Tyler’s VetraSpec application and implementing a monthly data quality check, Ramsey County’s Veteran Services has significantly reduced the number of records with missing race data, from 52% in 2020 to just 11% in 2023.

This improvement in race data quality means that the Ramsey County Veteran Services can now implement surveys, conduct evaluations, and engage in performance monitoring through a racial equity lens, equipping the agency to better serve the diverse needs of the veteran population.

Congratulations to the Ramsey County Veteran Services for their outstanding dedication to our veterans and to equitable service delivery.

Interested in how this technology can improve your agency’s delivery of veteran services? Learn more about Tyler’s Veterans’ Benefits and the full suite of Workforce Case Management solutions at tylertech.com/veteransbenefits.