In 2014, Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education was awarded grant money to redesign and expand the Multistate Longitudinal Data Exchange, an initiative that allows participating states to directly share individual-level education and workforce data, from a four-state pilot to a ten-state exchange. WICHE staff believed they could get the redesigned exchange up and running in just over a year, but two years later, states and WICHE were still months away from exchanging data. Finally, in the summer of 2017, the exchange went live!  In this session, WICHE staff will talk about the challenges and lessons that they (some might say, naively) did not expect to encounter. By navigating these challenges, WICHE staff have learned what key ingredients are needed to successfully upscale a pilot initiative. 

#GrowingPains