The purpose of the brief is to define Intensive Technical Assistance (ITA) and briefly illustrate its use in education. The U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs defines Intensive TA as: Technical assistance services that require a stable, on-going negotiated relationship between the TA Center staff and the TA recipient, and should include a purposeful, planned series of activities designed to reach an outcome that is valued by the host organization. Intensive TA typically results in changes to policy, program, practice, or operations that support increased recipient capacity and/or improved outcomes at one or more systems levels. Iterative evaluation and feedback strategies are a requisite of Intensive/Sustained TA. Using the federal definition as a foundation, "Intensive TA" means TA done with a sharp focus on purpose and outcomes as well as considerable depth, breadth, coherence, and energy in relation to achieving those outcomes.

Fixsen, D., Blase, K., Horner, R., & Sugai, G. (2009). Intensive Technical Assistance. Chapel Hill, NC: FPG Child Development Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.