Policymakers at the state and local levels tackle some of the toughest problems facing society. To make measurable progress in solving these problems, public policy needs to be effective, efficient, and evidence based. Justine Hastings of Brown University draws on her experiences founding Research Improving People’s Lives (RIPL), a nonprofit research–policy partnership in Rhode Island that aims to make state policy more fact based and more effective through the creation of an integrated database of state administrative data and derived tables. She provides best practices for creating the database and using it effectively to derive policy insights.