About the Annual National Conference

The Coleridge Initiative National Annual Conference is the country’s leading gathering for people working to make government and administrative data more impactful for public good. Each year the conference brings together leaders from across state agencies nationwide, federal policymakers and researchers, the C-Suite from partner organizations, and changemakers from philanthropic funders, all of whom attend to share their expertise in driving forward the use of data for better government decision making.

Over three days, attendees exchange lessons from real-world collaborations, explore tools and governance models that work, and chart new partnerships that move data from silos to solutions.

About This Year’s Theme: Data Beyond Borders

Across the country, today’s most urgent public challenges of economic mobility, education pathways, health access, and workforce readiness cut across every border. Yet the data needed to understand and solve these issues is in many cases fragmented by agency, sector, and state.

“Data Beyond Borders” reflects a simple truth: the data infrastructure we build has to be able to connect the dots to bring greater decision-making power to those shaping policy and the communities that policy effects.

Data Beyond Borders captures Coleridge’s mission to develop data infrastructure for the future through shared, secure, and privacy-preserving approaches. It underscores our commitment to helping states and federal partners collaborate across systems, accelerate responsible data use, and strengthen public trust.

At the same time, the theme speaks to the power of innovation, the drive to push new ideas, tools, and technologies into the policy space so leaders can act on evidence with more speed, clarity, and confidence.

The future of evidence-based policy depends on a connected, trusted, and durable data infrastructure. To build it, we must think and act beyond borders.