Program Support for Housing and Community Development
Key service areas include technical assistance and training, policy and program analysis, statistical surveys and research, market and feasibility analysis, and knowledge management. Our staff and business associates comprise a diverse mix of personnel, including former government employees with decades of experience in housing and community development programs, academic researchers from distinguished universities, and highly skilled housing professionals with hands-on experience in housing management, finance, grants monitoring, and other types of support. We are dedicated to supporting our clients in their diverse missions to expand and improve affordable housing, promote homeownership opportunities, stimulate community transformation, assist with disaster recovery, comply with reporting requirements, and enhance their performance.
Since 2011, Econometrica has been providing technical assistance through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) OneCPD/Community Compass initiative, which has convened a community of technical assistance providers to serve the Office of Public and Indian Housing, Office of Community Planning and Development (CPD), and other HUD programs and customers. Through OneCPD/Community Compass, Econometrica has provided a variety of services, with a focus on housing, community development, economic development, and neighborhood stabilization.
Program Support for Financial Management Activities
Econometrica provides financial experts with experience in budget and finance to support clients in fulfilling and scaling their finance objectives. We are able to provide redundancy in staffing to ensure adequate support; assign experienced analysts to develop the first drafts of deliverables to provide the highest quality possible; maintain strict version control of every deliverable and create after-action templates for future use to perform efficiently and effectively; and perform quality control that includes back-testing, cross-checking, and challenge reviews to validate the results.
We scale our staffing to meet needs. In one case, we onboarded more than 50 employees in 2 years within Econometrica to meet the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ surge needs related to the Affordable Care Act. We have teaming agreements with more than 50 firms and contracting relationships with more than 100 subject matter experts to ensure we can provide the right people with the right experience and expertise at the right time for the Housing and Finance world.
Program Support for Financial Systems Activities
Econometrica provides system integration and financial system development services in financial agencies. Our approach to support includes three elements:
1. Provide a “big toolbox.” To support such requirements for financial, programmatic, and IT-related competencies, Econometrica maintains dual teaming: We cross-train dedicated project staff members in multiple disciplines to provide flexibility and breadth of competencies, yet we have specialists ready to provide assistance on short notice to provide specific expertise, such as an SAS coder or an Oracle database administrator.
2. Provide modernization. Our approach draws on best practices from both Federal agencies and the commercial sector. We adapt models, documents, procedures, and even code as needed. The Office of Management and Budget encourages leveraging cross-agency resources, and we have found that using existing public documents and best practice procedures dramatically reduces clearance and development times.
3. Provide innovation. While modernization is about keeping up with industry practices, innovation is about solving unique problems. Econometrica has a strong record of developing new systems for workforce planning, internal cost analyses, and Oracle database interfaces, among others. For example, we recently performed a staff performance and load analysis for the U.S. Small Business Administration that recommended “smoothing” metrics and scheduling. Additionally, Econometrica was the system integrator and prepared the strategic plan for the Export–Import Bank of the United States’ Financial Modernization Initiative.
