Iowa leverages data to make child care easier to find.
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The state’s Child Care Connect platform is like “OpenTable for childcare,” streamlining the process of finding and researching available care options, one expert says.
Across the U.S., 51% of residents live in a child care desert, where the number of children is outpacing the number of available child care slots. Part of the problem, one official says, is driven by the laborious task of parents finding and researching the right child care options for them.
To ease the process for families in need of support child support, Iowa launched a data tool last year in a bid to close child care information and service gaps. The Child Care Connect, or C3, platform shares near real-time availability data from child care providers across the state, helping parents find center- or home-based child care and helping providers collect data more efficiently.
Broadly speaking, the platform’s impact goes beyond alleviating families’ child care needs. Access to such care also opens the door to economic and workforce development, as parents are able to return to and stay in work, said Ryan Page, director of child care at the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services.
In fact, due to child care challenges, state officials report that Iowa loses an estimated $935 million each year in tax revenue, employee absences and workplace turnover.
Between August 2024 and May 2025, the C3 platform saw more than 14,000 users search for child care. The platform offers various tools including a guided search function that families can use to find providers through an interactive questionnaire that helps filter results based on inquiries like the child’s age, the provider’s quality rating, hours of operation and other variables.
“We want families to know that there is a dedicated resource that supports them,” Page said.
The guided search service, for instance, was the site’s most popular feature, receiving 24,272 page views from 13,623 active users within nine months of the platform’s launch, Page said.
Users can also search for care providers through a routing service like a navigation app, enabling them to input locations like a parent’s work place or a child’s school to find child care facilities in the area. The site also includes public dashboards that track child care vacancies and supply and demand by program type, age group, city and county.
The dashboards can inform officials where additional child care investments are needed, Page said. Residents may report a shortage of available providers, but data could show that there is an adequate number of providers in the community.
This discrepancy, Page explained, could indicate to officials that they need to address local barriers to accessing that child care. For instance, Page pointed to the value of at-home child care services, which can be more feasible for some communities like rural towns where a central child care facility may be difficult to get to if the town is spread out.
Plus, the data can help Iowa attract businesses looking to break ground in the state, Page said. State and local officials, for instance, can leverage C3 data to inform employers where current child care options are as well as inform efforts to create more care facilities.
Child care availability data is automatically updated every night through integrations between providers’ child care management systems with the state’s data warehouse and API solutions, said Amy Smigielski, early childhood practice manager at Resultant, a data analytics firm that partnered with the state’s Health and Human Services Department and Iowa State University to develop the platform.
This model helps reduce providers’ reliance on manual data entry and the need to learn new systems and tasks. Accurate, timely availability data transfers, for instance, can make it easier for providers to serve families receiving child care subsidies, which usually entails additional data tracking and reporting requirements.
It can take weeks for a family to connect with a child care provider that works for them, scrolling through webpages or making endless phone calls to find a solution, she said, while the C3 platform is like “OpenTable for child care.”