Case Study: Los Angeles County achieves reduced costs and improved indigent adult services while protecting privacy with SAS Analytics

LA County improves indigent adult services, supports policy changes and protects privacy

SAS helped Los Angeles County tackle a fragmented, privacy-sensitive data problem: county agencies maintained separate records for about 96,000 indigent adults in the General Relief program, preventing leaders from understanding cross-agency service use, measuring cost/benefit, and reducing duplication without violating confidentiality. Analysts and officials were particularly concerned that linking records would compromise privacy, so the challenge was to get a holistic, evidence-based view while protecting individual identities.

Using SAS Analytics (with DataFlux encoding and a centralized data warehouse), the county de-identified and linked records to analyze service utilization securely. The work uncovered and corrected duplicative services, identified residents eligible for federal benefits, enabled cost predictions for new programs, and produced statistical proof that supportive housing reduces costs. A 900-person rental-subsidy pilot saved the county money, helped target mentally ill individuals for better services, and paved the way for expanded, data-driven policy and a second project phase to share historical information with eligibility and social workers.

Los Angeles County

Manuel Moreno

Director of Research