There’s plenty of data showing that high-quality services for children ages birth to five are a great investment. And there’s also plenty of data to indicate that not nearly enough children are receiving the services they might need—Head Start and Early Head Start, state pre-K, subsidized child care, special education, home visiting, and more. But there’s so much that states don’t know about the early childhood system that we need to. Improved technology can help, if used correctly. This brief looks at how states developing Early Childhood Integrated Data Systems (ECIDS) can take advantage of cloud-based technology to improve their data integration processes.