Our gift to Texas

Data is at the heart of what we do at Texas 2036.

It’s what allows us to serve as a resource to bring Texans together around a set of long-term strategies to secure Texas’ prosperity through our state’s bicentennial and beyond.

We've recently restructured how we present the extensive collection of data tools that drive our policy work. The goal is to make it easier for all Texans to find and use this informative and compelling data on their own to draw fresh insights about the challenges and opportunities facing the state in the coming years.

We're happy now for the opportunity to pull the curtain back and give you a quick guide to our restyled data page. We’re offering this as a set of “living” Texas dashboards, where metrics will regularly update so everyone can keep track of our state’s progress.

Central to our data work are three interactive resources that give Texans the ability to dive into robust datasets containing Texas-specific numbers across important areas including justice, health and employment.

Those tools, centrally located on our new data page, are:

• Data lab: A rich repository of national and Texas-level data across topics like health care, efficient government or business and talent attraction. In addition, this dashboard allows users to take more granular looks at county-level data or to pull profiles for specific Texas counties.

• Texas voter poll: A periodic survey of 1,000 voters presenting a vital perspective on what really matters to Texans. Responses are organized across subgroups and geographic regions. Stay tuned for the results of the next voter poll coming soon.

• Strategic framework: This data-driven roadmap tracks the state’s progress across our 36 aspirational goals. Updated late last year, the datasets in the framework support our legislative agenda for this legislative session.

You can also use our data page to look through more than a dozen other tools developed by our data team to help policymakers and stakeholders address public policy issues. The tools are organized around the six policy pillars — education and workforce, health, infrastructure, natural resources, justice and safety, and government performance — that prioritize our policy work.

Here are just a few examples:

• Community college financial simulator: We model the impact of changes to the state financial formula for community colleges. We launched this tool to support policy discussions this year in the Legislature on proposed reforms to the methods of finance for community colleges to one that is outcomes based.
• State parks: Research indicates that every $1 in public money spent on parks can generate between $4 and $12 in economic return. State park investment can generate meaningful and measurable economic benefits at the state level as well as for local and rural economies.
• The uninsured project: In partnership with the Cicero Group, we launched the largest national study of people without access to affordable health care. Highlights include profiles of uninsured Texans as well as the unique barriers to health care coverage.

• Texas advanced coursetaking dashboard: We visualized Texas Education Agency datasets to reveal disparities in advanced course offerings for select student groups across school, Senate and House districts as well as Educational Service Center regions.

• Health price transparency: With this data tool, public hospital prices across hospitals and payers are displayed interactively. The user can view the negotiated rate of a Texas health care service by insurance payer, hospital and public health region.

• Water and drought: The State Water Plan predicts water supplies in Texas will not meet increasing demand over the next 50 years. This data tool explores potential negative impacts on Texas’ economy, with a focus on three sectors — manufacturing, energy and agriculture.

• Extreme weather: Everything is bigger in Texas, including the weather forecasts. Innovative research led by Texas State’s Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon predicts potential extreme weather events and natural disasters up to the year 2036.

We’re continually improving our data tools and adding new ones, so check back often for updates.

This redesigned data page is our gift to you, fellow Texans. Our hope is that you will use the data collected here and that it spurs the kinds of questions that will advance our state in the years to come.