Assistance program
Workforce Data Quality Initiative (WDQI)
$225.8 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Employment and Training Administration, Labor, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants (Contracts)
- CFDA number
- 17.261
- What it does
- Address national employment and training issues through demonstrations, pilot projects, and applied research that have interstate validity and will aid policymakers and stakeholders in addressing these issues and for continuous improvement of the public workforce system.
- Who benefits
- Generally limited to the economically disadvantaged and those who are underemployed, unemployed, need to upgrade their skills in order to retain jobs, at-risk youth, and/or to those who have barriers to employ ability. With WDQI funding, states are required to develop a scorecard, using their longitudinal administrative database, that will display information in a consumer-friendly manner. These scorecards will help inform consumer-choice when selecting workforce training providers.
- Who applies
- Only states and U.S. territories are eligible to apply for WDQI grants. These funds are used to develop, or enhance, state IT systems established as longitudinal administrative databases for the long-term analysis of individual data from pre-K through the workforce to determine the effectiveness of education and training programs.
- Authorized by
- WIOA supersedes the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 and amends the Wagner-Peyser Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The WIOA Joint Rule for Unified and Combined State Plans, Performance Accountability, and the One-Stop System Joint Provisions; Final Rule was published in th…
- Program site
- https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/ ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
How the money flows
Committed dollars by how this program's money is paid out.
Direct payments
$2.0M
<1%
Grants
$223.8M
99%
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
Administering agencies
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments