BALTIMORE — The Maryland Department of Human Services (DHS) launched two live, interactive data dashboards on March 7, 2025, aimed at boosting transparency and accountability in its programs. The Family Investment Administration (FIA) Dashboard and the Social Services Administration (SSA) Dashboard, now accessible on the DHS website, provide real-time insights into services for Maryland’s children and families, reflecting the agency’s push to enhance efficiency and public access to information.
The FIA Dashboard details the number of applicants actively receiving benefits across multiple programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Cash Assistance, Medical Assistance, Long-Term Care, and Waiver Programs. Users can filter data by program, sub-program, confirmation year and month, and residential jurisdiction, offering a granular view of how benefits are distributed statewide. SNAP supports low-income families with food benefits, while Cash Assistance includes Temporary Cash Assistance (TCA) and other aid like the Temporary Disability Assistance Program (TDAP). Medical Assistance covers healthcare costs for needy residents, with sub-programs like MA for Aged, Blind, and Disabled (MA-ABD). The dashboard, refreshed daily, excludes null or blank values to ensure accuracy, meaning totals reflect only complete data entries.
The SSA Dashboard focuses on youth in out-of-home care, providing current placement details, breakdowns of kinship care, trends by age and placement duration, and demographic insights. It tracks active foster care cases, including placements like Residential Treatment Centers (RTC) and Treatment Foster Care (TFC), with removal start dates marking each child’s entry into care. Data refreshes daily and suppresses counts below 10, following CDC guidelines, to protect privacy. Like the FIA tool, it omits missing values to maintain reliable statistics.
“DHS is committed to transparency and improving services for Maryland’s most vulnerable residents,” the agency stated. The FIA Dashboard is available at https://dhs.maryland.gov/family-investment-administration-fia/, and the SSA Dashboard at https://dhs.maryland.gov/social-services-administration-ssa/. Solomon Durgam of the DHS Data Office created the FIA tool, with inquiries directed to Maryann Maher (maryann.maher1@maryland.gov) and Asnake Yeheyis (asnake.yeheyis@maryland.gov). Tahereh Hematian manages the SSA Dashboard, with questions to dlssa_operationsanddata_dhs@maryland.gov.
DHS, Maryland’s primary social services agency, serves a subset of the 1.8 million Medicaid recipients managed by the Maryland Department of Health, focusing on non-MAGI Medicaid enrollees. The dashboards align with a January 2025 initiative to modernize data collection, following the creation of the DHS Data Office. For more on DHS, visit www.dhs.maryland.gov.
