U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Administration for Children and Families
Office of Community Services
Division of State Assistance
370 L'Enfant Promenade, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20447
www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ocs/programs/csbg

Community Services Block Grant
Dear Colleague Letter

Re: Notice on the Announcement of the ACSI Survey for CSBG Eligible Entities

Date: September 17, 2015

Dear Colleagues,

As part of our ongoing effort to assess and improve performance across the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) Network, the Office of Community Services (OCS) is seeking feedback through the American Customer Survey Index (ACSI) survey from CSBG eligible entities.

This survey provides you with an opportunity to offer constructive feedback to OCS and to your State Lead CSBG Agency.  Your participation, while voluntary, is critical for OCS and the States to understand how well the States, as part of the CSBG network, are delivering services to local entities and where best to focus our training and technical assistance efforts for the State CSBG Lead Agencies.  This requires learning about your State CSBG Lead Agency’s efforts this past year in developing and implementing the State Plan.  The results of this survey will guide OCS’ training and technical assistance efforts and will provide baseline data to the State CSBG Lead Agency that can be used in developing next year’s State Plan.

OCS will not use the results of this survey for policy or funding decisions in CSBG.  Instead, OCS and the States will use the survey results to learn about performance in several areas addressed in the State Accountability Measures.  States will be expected to use the survey information to identify areas for improvement to be reported in their 2017 CSBG State Plan.  This effort aligns with OCS’ revised performance management framework and its shared oversight and monitoring responsibilities.

CFI Group, an independent third-party research group, is administering the survey.  Your answers will remain anonymous and neither the State CSBG Lead Agency nor OCS will see your individual responses.  CFI Group will provide aggregated survey data to OCS, the CSBG Lead Agencies, CSBG State Associations, and the eligible entities early in 2016.

We expect the survey will be made available online on Monday, October 5, 2015 and will remain open through Friday, October 23, 2015.  Executive Directors will receive official notification via email from the CFI Group on behalf of OCS with the email address of: noreply-cfigroup@qualtrics-survey.com; please be on the lookout.  Completing the survey should only take about 10-12 minutes of your time.

We are striving to be a high performing network — one that sets challenging goals, listens to its customers, measures its progress, and uses those measures to improve performance.  How well we perform is an important measure of success for the entire CSBG Network.  We value your feedback and look forward to your participation in the upcoming ACSI survey.  Should you have any questions please contact Josezetta Alexander, CSBG Program Specialist, at Josezetta.Alexander@acf.hhs.gov or (202) 401-4595.

Jeannie L. Chaffin                                                                             Seth Hassett
Director                                                                                             Director, Division of State Assistance
Office of Community Services                                                           Office of Community Services