VOL. 3 – September 1, 2021

Summit director speaks at Mortgage Bankers Association, Summit & Grant Thornton leaders interviewed, new case studies, and more

Summit Director Josh Goldberg to Speak at Mortgage Bankers Association’s Risk Management, QA & Fraud Prevention Forum on September 28

Summit director Josh Goldberg will be speaking on a panel at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Risk Management, QA & Fraud Prevention Forum on September 28 at 2 p.m. The panel will cover appraisal bias and fair lending, two subjects that Summit is committed to addressing and which are highly relevant to our clients.

Summit Launches Appraisal Bias Technical Working Group

Summit is proud to announce that we have launched an appraisal bias technical working group. The TWG combines our housing economics background in building and reviewing automated valuation models and our fair-lending analysis support for various agencies and will work to detect and quantify the degree of appraisal bias among minority homeowners.

NuvoSum.com Is Now Live!

NuvoSum is a mentor-protégé joint venture between NuvoLogic Consulting, Inc. and Summit Consulting, LLC, under the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Mentor-Protégé Program. NuvoSum combines the resources, talents, and experience of both partners to pursue competitive set-aside contracts for economically disadvantaged woman-owned small businesses (EDWOSB) and 8(a) small businesses.

Stay tuned for the NuvoSum podcast on September 15! The podcast will feature Judy Phruksaraj, CEO of NuvoLogic, J. Anthony Curcio, Partner at Summit, and Kate Lynch Machado, Director of Client Development at Summit.

Learn more about our joint venture by visiting the new website at nuvosum.com. Or contact the team by email at info@nuvosum.com.

Summit Sponsors Centennial Celebration of the Budget & Accounting Act

Summit sponsored the 100-year celebration of the 1921 Budget & Accounting Act, which established the process for the president to introduce a budget plan that is then approved by Congress. Summit was particularly excited to be a featured sponsor because the Budget & Accounting Act is so important to furthering our mission to make government effective and society just.

For example, Summit has supported the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service’s Broadband ReConnect Program since its inception in 2018. The program provides loan and grant funding to get high-speed broadband access to rural communities across America. We have established application review guidelines, built reporting tools, and managed the review, award, and closing process for the program’s first two funding rounds. Summit is proud to continue working with USDA RUS to ensure the program efficiently advances funding to eligible applicants and facilitates greater access to broadband in underserved communities. 

Summit Provides Annual Health Enforcement Training for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration

Summit recently hosted its annual health-enforcement training as part of the learning curriculum at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA).

During this full day of training, we taught the basics of understanding and analyzing health claims data to more than 50 EBSA investigators located across the United States. We hosted this year’s training virtually due to the ongoing pandemic and gave lessons using video conferencing, on-screen presentations, and a demonstration of Summit’s analytical tools. Read more about Summit’s data analytics work with EBSA in our case study.

Summit Director Sarah Cunningham Featured on GovExec Daily Podcast

Sarah Cunningham (Summit director, formerly HUD and OMB) and Doug Criscitello (Grant Thornton Public Sector managing director, also formerly HUD and OMB) joined the GovExec Daily podcast to discuss the intersection of climate and housing policy in the Biden administration. Listen here.

More from Summit’s Collaboration with Grant Thornton

Summit is releasing a series of articles in collaboration with Grant Thornton where we discuss HUD’s role in achieving the administration’s climate resilience objectives. In each article, we unpack specific solutions that HUD may leverage based on its previous track record and emerging needs, as well as how improvements to federal budgeting can enable climate resilience in housing and community development. Check out previous posts:

• Perspectives on Housing & Climate Change Resilience
• Opportunities for Climate Resilience at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
• [NEW] Addressing Climate Change Through U.S. Government–Backed Mortgage Lending and Securitization

Mary Baker, Government Affairs Counselor at K&L Gates, Talks Opportunity Zones with Summit’s Auyon Rahman

Hadley Wickham Discusses Data Science, Yoga, and the Next Generation of Statisticians with Summit Partner Albert Lee

Our Newest Case Studies

Succession Planning Evaluation for the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Human Resources Solutions

This evaluation was conducted by the Summit and Fors Marsh Group team. The team’s work will help the SBA develop a proactive, effective leadership succession process, which will strengthen the agency’s ability to serve small businesses by building a high-performing workforce. The final report was published on the SBA website.

Evaluation of Characteristics and Perceptions of Disaster Assistance Mitigation Loan Option Borrowers

Summit empowered the SBA with evidence-based conclusions and recommendations the agency needed to better understand the behavior of its borrowers. The team organized these recommendations based on feasibility and impact so the SBA could choose the easiest to implement and most impactful to its mission. The final report was published on SBA’s website.

Evaluation of Acquisition Planning at the U.S. Small Business Administration

With Summit’s support, the SBA was empowered to improve its acquisitions process thanks to evidence-based data and tailored program recommendations. The SBA’s acquisition team is newly aligned with its future-state objectives and regulatory requirements. The final report was published on the SBA’s website.

Delphi COVID-19 Symptoms Survey Analysis

The Delphi survey data exhibited deviations in vaccine uptake, vaccine acceptance, and other measures compared to CDC benchmarks. Summit conducted an exploratory analysis to determine whether those deviations could be mitigated. Using available demographic variables, including race, gender, education, and age, Summit conducted post-stratification, Generalized Regression (GREG) estimation, inverse propensity score weighting, and raking. We identified promising methods that adjusted a portion of the deviation and provided recommendations for further exploration.

Analysis of FY2013 Policy Change on Disability Management under the Federal Employees' Compensation Program

To understand the effectiveness of a policy change, Summit (on behalf of the U.S. Department of Labor) examined FECP administrative data on all cases that received disability management services between January 2006 and June 2017. Researchers separated cases into two time periods to facilitate descriptive comparative analysis of workers’ outcomes. The final report was published on the DOL website.

Baseball outing with Summit staff and leaders

Take us out to the ball game! Summit Consulting, LLC, had a great outing to the Washington Nationals game in July. We got to welcome many of the talented employees and interns joining us and spend time together on a steamy summer day. Thanks to everyone who came!

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Healthcare Programs

Summit has won our recompete work with HUD’s Office of Hospital Facilities (OHF). Over the next two years, we will modernize risk management operations for OHF’s hospital portfolio (both production and asset management). We will transition OHF from Moody’s RiskAnalyst to Moody’s CreditLens and redeploy our risk-rating tool, early watch algorithm, RShiny-based portfolio management dashboard, and ad hoc financial analysis support.

U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, Rural Maternity and Obstetrics Management Strategies

HRSA has established the Rural Maternity and Obstetrics Management Strategies (RMOMS) program to provide better, more affordable healthcare services to expectant mothers in remote parts of the country. This program includes voluntary enrollment in Medicaid, access to an array of service providers, and additional care through telehealth and other specialty services. Summit and our partner, Mission Analytics Group, will determine the program’s effectiveness through primary and secondary research including interviews with Medicaid officials, quasi-experimental designs, and health claims reviews among RMOMS participants.

U.S. Small Business Administration Surveillance Reviews Evaluation

Summit, along with our partner, Industrial Economics, Inc., is conducting an evaluation of the SBA’s surveillance review process, through which the SBA assesses whether Procurement Centers (PCs) across the federal government are providing maximum practicable opportunity for small business participation in federal contracting. This mixed-methods evaluation will examine how surveillance reviews can be made more effective and efficient, what can be learned from the shift to virtual surveillance reviews during the pandemic, and to what extent PCs increase their small business contracting goal achievements following a review. The Team will conduct administrative data analysis, field a survey with surveillance review staff and PCs, and conduct interviews with the same population.

A Government Agency

A federal government agency outside the United States needed reliable and secure IT services to enable federal organizations to meet their missions. The agency is currently planning to conduct an evaluation of all the digital services it provides to the government. Summit is assisting the agency with the planning for this evaluation by conducting an environmental scan on what evaluations have been done on similar IT agencies or organizations at the federal or state level.

A Leading Foundation

Summit’s contract was extended to continue hosting the data for the foundation’s portfolio of impact investing activities.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Data Science Staff Augmentation Task Order

Summit won a task order on our data science BPA to support ongoing investigation and litigation efforts within the bureau.

Community Development Financial Institutions, Financial Management Services Task Order

Summit will provide underwriting support to the CDFI Fund Bond Guarantee Program during the FY 2021 Guarantee Application Round, through August 2021, as a subcontractor to Archetype.