Be the Variable For Change

The Independent Variable technology team focuses on two primary strands of development: 

1. Rapid Prototyping of Data Solutions Using Off-the-Shelf Software: As practitioners at heart, we understand that many times the best data solution for frontline staff needs to be low-cost, flexible, and easy to learn. As such, we meet clients where they are, helping to streamline and adapt organizations’ existing data capture methods to produce easier workflows that render more valuable insights. 

2. Development of Enterprise-Level Open Source Software Solutions: As a firm committed to social impact, we recognize that scalability is an important consideration for any big idea. As such, we strive to make software products that can handle the needs of even the largest and most complex of organizations and systems. Further, we operate our firm with an open source ethos, ensuring that our software products may be used and modified free of cost or proprietary barriers. Our efforts to build enterprise-level open source software have begun with the development of DAO Perform, a data and performance management system designed to help progressive prosecutors’ offices achieve a more equitable and effective criminal justice system. At scale, this system will not only remove cost barriers for organizations with limited budgets, but open the door for government agencies, community organizations, and civic technologists alike to collaborate towards transformational gains in knowledge and practice. 

The video below offers a brief demonstration of Independent Variable’s enterprise case management application, Perform, in action. While initially built to help progressive prosecutors’ offices better implement and track their criminal justice innovation and reform efforts, the Perform application has been scoped for maximum design flexibility to allow for rapid modification for any number of diverse use cases. 

With clients ranging from large government agencies to small nonprofit startups, the Independent Variable team offers trainings to organizations of any size and scope to help ensure they are delivering the most effective, impactful services to those they aim to serve.

Independent Variable offers trainings on a wide variety of topics, including, but not limited to: 

1. Human-Centered Design Thinking
2. Data-Informed Performance Management
3. Social Impact & Innovation
4. The American Juvenile Justice System
5. Content-Specific Best Practices 

Ever feel that public services have not been designed to meet the needs of their users? Watch below to see an excerpt from our training on how to design more impactful criminal justice services, with a particular focus on the unique value proposition seen in service industries where the payer is not the end user.

While training and technology support may be useful to clients as they aim to generate new ideas and insights, Independent Variable believes that it is in the implementation phase where these new ideas and insights will live or die. As such, Independent Variable staff continues to develop and curate the Practitioner’s Innovation Toolkit, a user-friendly collection of simple, best-practice tools for successful innovation. 

The toolkit is offered to all Independent Variable clients, with additional trainings available on how to utilize the tools included to help pick the best ideas, test assumptions, and measure what works.

Need a structured way to keep track of your new innovation initiatives? Our Innovation Accounting Tool offers a fillable PDF to help benchmark your progress as you strive to reach your target goals. Click below to download our PDF!

Download Our Innovation Accounting Tool

Independent Variable strives to be a thought partner with clients. This partnership may take many forms, from consulting with partners on distinctive organizational strategy and policy efforts, to the drafting of white papers, policy reports, public presentations, and grant applications. With extensive experience in program and policy management, as well as drafting and designing a wide variety of critical organizational documents, we are here to help.

Interested in how a government agency may use data and design principles to imagine a fairer justice system? To see some of our ideas in action, read the executive summary of a white paper we co-authored with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office entitled: “Overlooked or Overscrutinized? A Case Study of Girls’ Justice in Philadelphia and Implications for the Design of a Fairer System.” 

Download a Copy of Our Report