42 U.S.C. § 611 — Data collection and reporting

(a) States must collect monthly and report quarterly disaggregated case information about families receiving assistance under this part or programs using qualified State^* expenditures, excluding section 603(a)(5) activities. The data must cover residence county; listed disability benefits; ages; family size and relationships; employment and earnings; marital status; race and education of adults and children; housing, medical, nutrition, and child-care benefits and amounts; months of assistance; adult^* participation and weekly hours in education, subsidized and unsubsidized work, public work or service, job search, training, and vocational education; section 607 participation data; assistance types, amounts, reductions, and sanctions; unearned income; citizenship; sampled closed-case exits and reasons (employment, marriage, section 608(a)(7), sanction, or State policy); and whether each member under 20 is a parent. A State may use an approved scientific sample; the Secretary^* must provide sampling and collection methods for valid estimates and may verify quality. Reports must separately state Federal administrative or overhead percentages, State needy-family spending, section 603(a)(5) amounts, noncustodial parents in work activities, transitional-service spending and descriptions, and monthly numbers and dollar values of recipient families and section 603(a)(5) participants and terminations. The Secretary must define data elements by regulation and consult Labor. (b) After fiscal year^* 1997 and every year after, the Secretary must report State participation and employment, earnings, child-support, pregnancy, and child-poverty objectives; family demographic and financial traits; State-program traits; and employment and earnings trends. (c) Pre-reauthorization State-by-State reports on engagement in additional work activities and expenditures for other benefits and services. Each eligible State^* must submit two reports to the Secretary. (1)(A)(i) No later than May 31, 2011, the State must submit a report for March 1 through March 31, 2011. The report must contain the information in (B) and (C). (ii) No later than August 31, 2011, the State must submit a report for April 1 through June 30, 2011. For each of those three months, it must contain the average monthly numbers for the information in (B), and it must contain the information in (C). (B)(i) For each work-eligible individual in a family receiving assistance during a reporting period, the report must say whether, during a month in that period, the individual took part in any activity directed toward self-sufficiency. If so, it must identify each specific activity that (I) is not a “work activity” under section 607(d) of this title but is otherwise reasonably calculated to help the family move toward self-sufficiency, or (II) is the type of activity that would count toward the State’s participation rates under section 607 of this title except that (aa) the individual did not participate for enough hours, (bb) the individual reached the maximum time limit for counting participation in that activity toward the State’s work participation rate, or (cc) the number of work-eligible individuals in the activity exceeds a limit under section 607. (ii) The report must also include any other information about the information required under clause (i) that the Secretary considers appropriate. This may include, when an individual has no participation hours, the principal reason or reasons for that nonparticipation. (C)(i) The report must include detailed, separated information about the types and amounts of State expenditures during the reporting period using (I) Federal funds provided under section 603 that the State reports, or will report, on Form ACF-196 or a successor form as “other expenditures” or as benefits or services provided under section 604(a)(2), or (II) State funds spent to meet section 609(a)(7) and reported as “other expenditures” on that form. (ii) It must also include any other information about those expenditures that the Secretary considers appropriate. (2) At the same time it submits each report, the State must publish on a State agency website, or another State-maintained website approved by the Secretary, (A) a summary of the report, (B) an analysis of how the report changes the measures of total engagement in work activities from what the State reported, or will report, in the comparable quarterly report under subsection (a), and (C) a description of the most common activities in the report that do not count toward the State participation rates under section 607. (3) The sampling authority in subsection (a)(1)(B) applies to these reports in the same way it applies to the reports required under subsection (a)(1)(A). (4)(A) No later than June 30, 2011, the Secretary must send Congress a report about the information eligible States submitted for the March 2011 period. The report must include a State-by-State summary and analysis, identify States with missing or incomplete reports, and recommend administrative or legislative changes the Secretary considers necessary to require recurring reports. (B) No later than September 30, 2011, the Secretary must send Congress a report about the information eligible States submitted for the April-June 2011 period. It must include the same State-by-State summary and analysis, identification of missing or incomplete reports, and recommendations for recurring reporting. (5) The requirements of chapter 5 of title 5, commonly called the “Administrative Procedure Act,” and any other law about rulemaking or Federal Register publication do not apply to guidance or instructions the Secretary issues to implement this subsection to the extent the Secretary decides that compliance would impede expeditious implementation. (d) The Secretary must designate, with OMB, State, and Tribal input, nonproprietary interoperable data standards, using accepted international, intergovernmental, Federal, searchable computer-readable, accounting, upgradeable, and existing standards such as XML when practicable. (e) The Secretary may select up to five grant States for a six-year pilot measuring work and family outcomes, including second-quarter employment and second- and fourth-quarter earnings. Targets use baseline and comparison data; two successive years of failure require a corrective plan or agreed adjustment. The pilot replaces section 607 for its years, requires sanctions for unjustified refusal to participate, requires data collection, and requires initial and final congressional reports. (f) For 2025 and later, States must report second-quarter employment after exit, fourth-quarter retention, median second-quarter earnings, and under-24 students’ diploma or equivalent attainment during assistance or within one year after exit. “Exit” means stopping assistance under the part. The Secretary must regulate reporting for national comparability.