Retirement, Tools, and Technical Assistance (TA) Support
Tribal Data Tracker Overview
The Data Tracker is a voluntary-use, Microsoft (MS) Access case management tool that allows Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) Tribal Lead Agencies to:
- Record information about the families and children served with CCDF funds (case-level data) and
- Generate the information required for the CCDF Annual ACF-700 (Part 1) report.
Background and Decision
Although the Data Tracker served as a viable tool for Tribal Lead Agencies for many years, its technology has become outdated. The Data Tracker was designed and developed over 20 years ago with the help of a Tribal Software Development Work Group. The current version of MS Access support will end in October 2025. Therefore, the OCC decided to discontinue the support of the Data Tracker in September 2024 (ending federal fiscal year 2024).
The Data Tracker will remain available for your use, at your option, but the Child Care Automated Reporting System (CARS) TA team and OCC will not provide technical assistance or support for the Tracker after September 2024. At this time, OCC will not be developing another Data Tracker, and Tribal Lead Agencies will need to acquire their own technology to support their CCDF reporting requirements in the future. As a reminder, CCDF funds can be used for technology investments.
Tools and Technical Assistance Opportunities
Currently, there are several Microsoft Excel spreadsheet tools available for use by Tribal Lead Agencies with small and medium allocations to support case management and calculating the administrative data needed for Part 1 of the ACF-700 report.
- Summary version— the primary audience for the Summary spreadsheet is Tribes with small allocation size, (no case level specific information is entered).
- Regional version— the audience is Tribes with multiple regions or sites; the spreadsheet allows for easy consolidation of data from the multiple regions for one report.
- Detail version— the primary audience for the Detail spreadsheet is Tribes with small or medium allocation size as they can enter family and child characteristics required for Part 1 of the ACF-700 report.
The Detail Excel spreadsheet can be downloaded from the CARS Resource Area .
For additional information, reach out to the CARS TA Team at CARS@acf.hhs.gov.