This perspective piece originally appeared in Inside INdiana Business.

Every day, somewhere in Indiana, a student chooses a program, an employer makes a hiring decision and a state dollar gets invested in a training pathway. Those decisions are being made with incomplete information — not because the data doesn’t exist, but because Indiana has not yet built the infrastructure to connect it across systems and stakeholders.

Senate Enrolled Act 254 (SEA 254), passed in the 2026 legislative session and effective July 1, aims to address that problem. The law directs the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) to develop an education-to-employment research program, a framework for analyzing and sharing data to inform state policy, economic development strategy, labor market alignment and return on investment.

This effort positions Indiana to take a more strategic approach to workforce development. The state already has strong assets, including a statewide community college system through Ivy Tech with reach into every region, advanced industries that offer strong wages and long-term growth and growing investments in credentials, apprenticeships and work-based learning. These assets give Indiana a strong foundation. SEA 254 asks the next question: Can Indiana see what those assets are producing, how they connect and where they need to be strengthened?

At CEOs of Indiana Corporate Partnership (CICP) and Ascend Indiana, we see this gap most clearly in our work with the advanced industries. Employers in these sectors – including advanced manufacturing, life sciences, tech and agbiosciences – are making decisions now about where to grow, what skills to hire for and which training partners to trust. SEA 254 creates an opportunity to bring clearer information to those conversations and decisions.

Indiana collects immense amounts of information across its education and workforce agencies. The Indiana Department of Education tracks K-12 progression. The Commission for Higher Education tracks postsecondary enrollment and completions. The Department of Workforce Development tracks employment, wages and training outcomes. The IEDC tracks employer growth and investment. Each of these agencies does its job well.

What we can’t see is whether a program led to a good job, whether a credential improved an individual’s wages and whether Indiana’s talent supply is aligned to where these industries are headed. That’s because the information and data rarely travel across those agencies in a systematic, trusted way. That is the challenge Ascend, through its Insights Collaborative, is helping to address. The Collaborative brings together leaders from Indiana’s education, workforce and industry ecosystem around a shared research agenda: a set of coordinated questions designed to guide how the state’s data system is structured and used, such as:

• Which credentials lead to wage gains in Indiana’s labor market?
• What regional gaps exist between talent supply and employer demand?
• Which programs are producing the outcomes that justify public investment?
• How do Indiana’s education and training pathways connect to the industries that anchor our regional economies?

Virginia reached this same inflection point and responded by creating the Virginia Office of Education Economics, a dedicated function to connect education, employment and wage data to answer those exact questions. It gives policymakers, employers, educators and students a common foundation for decisions that had previously been made on instinct and anecdote.

SEA 254 provides Indiana with a similar solution. It creates a formal mandate to treat education-to-employment data as a shared public resource, not a byproduct of individual agency reporting.

The need for that visibility is immediate. Indiana’s advanced industries are making location and investment decisions now. Students are choosing programs now. Public dollars are being committed now.

SEA 254 provides Indiana with a clearer, more connected understanding of what’s working, ultimately serving as another tool to strengthen workforce and economic development strategies and inform decisions. Aligning definitions, building trust across agencies and protecting privacy will require time and sustained effort, but the state now has a strong foundation to build on.

States that effectively connect education, workforce and economic data are better positioned to invest wisely, strengthen talent pipelines and compete for growth. With SEA 254, Indiana is well positioned to do the same.