In addition to work on the action plan, which centers on transparency and public access to information and research pertaining to the federal government, the committee will advise the GSA’s administrator on open government issues, challenges and opportunities that emerge in order to support the agency’s open government secretariat. 

“The OG FAC will allow GSA to tackle emerging open government issues, challenges, and opportunities through expert advice from these stakeholders,” Krystal Brumfield, GSA’s associate administrator for government-wide policy, said in a press release. “We look forward to receiving innovative suggestions on the development of the sixth Open Government National Action Plan as well as other efforts to strengthen open government policy and public engagement.”

The committee, as outlined in a Federal Register post, will consist of between 10 and 20  federal and non-federal members that possess “strong background and expertise” in open government and improving government delivery services. Outside of federal agency officials, the committee is open to nominees from state and local government, industry and academia. 

The post lists background themes to include anti-corruption, digital governance, gender and inclusion, media freedom, public participation and more. 

The GSA said the OG FAC will meet “at least four times per year” and the convenings will be open to the public unless otherwise determined by appropriate authorities. 

Additionally, the agency’s open government secretariat is set to host a public session in May to field questions regarding the selection process and timeline.

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He joins the Postal Regulatory Commission after serving as chief data officer for the state of Alaska and previously worked on the data analytics team at USPS’ Office of Inspector General.

Earlier in his career, Rappel-Schmid worked as an audit manager at USPS OIG and also previously was a member of the U.S. Marine Corps.

At the Postal Regulatory Commission, he will oversee the watchdog’s data management and compliance with the OPEN Government Data Act. Under the act, federal agencies must publish all their information as open data using standardized formats.

His appointment comes also as the regulatory body introduces a beta version of a service performance data dashboard designed to make postal data more accessible and usable. It is currently seeking public feedback on the tool, which displays national-level service performance results.

Commenting on Rappel-Schmid’s appointment, PRC chairman Michael Kubayanda said: “I am excited to welcome Russell Rappel-Schmid to the Commission.” He added: “With his experience implementing data initiatives and his knowledge of the postal sector, Russ is well-positioned to lead the Commission’s emergent open data efforts, and to support the Commission as it continues to provide transparency and accountability of the postal system.”

As chief data officer, Rappel-Schmid will report to the commission’s Secretary and Chief Administrative Officer Erica Barker.

The OPEN Government Data Act made permanent key aspects of the May 2013 Open Data Policy, which was enacted by the Obama administration.

The PRC is the independent federal agency responsible for overseeing operations at USPS.

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Agencies can use set-aside authorities, working capital funds and recaptured unobligated balances to implement OMB‘s June memo, which outlined a process for developing learning agendas and annual evaluation plans.

While the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act established critical leadership positions and activities to facilitate a culture of evidence, it amounted to an unfunded mandate that only applied to the 24 CFO Act agencies and still has guidance outstanding. OMB’s latest memo applies to all agencies and establishes evaluation as a “central function” of government, on par with budgeting and human resources, but doesn’t fully address the “long-underfunded” evidence-building community, said Nick Hart, president of the Data Foundation, during an event it hosted.

“Having just issued this memo saying agencies need resources, I might even lean in here and say it’s incumbent on OMB to make sure that’s part of budget requests that are sent to Congress,” Hart said. “It’s also incumbent on Congress, having authorized the Evidence Act, to ensure agencies have the resources to make it real.”

The Evidence Act required agencies to appoint a chief data officer, evaluation officer and statistical official, but the teams of the latter two are often small or nonexistent and under-resourced. For that reason they need to strengthen collaboration with each other, which OMB’s memo doesn’t address, said Melissa Chu, deputy director of the Committee on National Statistics at the National Academies and a former Department of Veterans Affairs and Census Bureau staffer.

Statistical agencies can help evaluation offices by determining what data is useful, promoting data stewardship and scientific integrity, providing technical assistance for quantitative efforts, and strategizing around evidence use. Collaboration is especially important because the Evidence Act directs statistical agencies to expand data access for evidence building, but Phase 3 guidance hasn’t been released by OMB — nor has Phase 2 guidance for the OPEN Government Data Act.

“There is an entire [Evidence Act] title around data governance and open data, for which there is not currently guidance,” Hart said. “There is an entire title around confidential data, protection of statistical information for which the regulations and guidance have not yet been issued, so if we want the ecosystem to succeed, we also need to keep those pieces moving along as well.”

Meanwhile evaluation offices can help boost the social and policy relevance of statistical agencies, Chu said.

OMB did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

While CDOs, evaluation officers and statistical officials serve as the pillars of evidence building, they may lack the expertise needed to form partnerships for additional resources. For that, additional team members are needed to address stakeholder engagement and also equity, said Lisa Aponte-Soto, a board member at the American Evaluation Association.

“One thing I would caution is there seems to be a lot of intentionality around providing clarity in operationalizing certain terminology but not around diversity and equity,” Aponte-Soto said. “And I would like more clarity around that.”

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Like other departments, the Navy is drawing on the Federal Data Strategy 2020 Action Plan and its Department of Defense Data Strategy Implementation Plan to focus its efforts. But the department didn’t meet the 2020 Action Plan’s six-month target for inventorying its data because of its size and scope, Sasala said.

Just how quickly the action will be completed is unclear because data quality and, more specifically, duplicate sets of low-quality data remain a problem for the Navy.

“We’re finding just massive, rampant data duplication,” Sasala said, during an AFFIRM event. “And so that’s actually hurting us much more than the quality itself.”

The data exists across multiple systems, and users have been allowed to “quote unquote innovate” with it without the Navy having a handle on its pedigree or provenance, he added.

Sasala said his priority is identifying “authoritative” datasets and where they come from while establishing who can use them and for what purposes.

Previously the Navy sought to establish authoritative systems, but not all data in a system is authoritative for the purpose the system was created. For instance, the Navy Enterprise Resource Planning financial management system serves as a general ledger for components, but not all users or even the department’s organizational structure.

At the same time, the Navy has created deputy data officer positions for the Navy and Marine Corps, which didn’t previously exist, and is working on establishing associate data officers for every command. Fortunately most commands already had associate data officers acting under different titles like “data analytics for the command” or “command data officer,” confusing because the acronym is CDO.

Sasala is in the process of appointing people to those roles and delegating statutory responsibilities from the OPEN Government Data Act to them, as well as creating a mechanism for holding them accountable for the work.

The Navy has also taken “great strides” injecting data and data professionals into its acquisition review process, known as Gate 6 reviews.

“Rather than allowing something to go into production that doesn’t have APIs and it doesn’t have data standards and is a closed ecosphere — that we can’t get access to the data and all this other stuff — we’ll have some say in some regard about whether or not we want to make that investment,” Sasala said.

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Much of that hinges on the policy advocacy group’s first recommendation that the next administration refocus the 10-year Federal Data Strategy to support evidence-based decision making. Honing in on core priorities like pandemic response, economic recovery, social equity and financial oversight with the strategy’s 2021 Action Plan will offer agencies much-needed direction, according to the policy document.

The “common-sense steps” are intended to improve the quality of the information agencies collect, as well as access, to make data more actionable.

“Recognizing that good decision-making needs good data, the Data Coalition calls on the next administration to prioritize efforts to improve the quality, accessibility, and usability of our
country’s data,” reads the document. “In doing so, the administration will support ongoing efforts to transform society’s capabilities to generate insights that can be used to promote transparency and accountability of our government in parallel with efforts to devise strategies for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of government operations.”

Portions of the 2021 Action Plan should specifically direct agencies on implementing the 2019 OPEN Government Data Act’s data inventory and open data expectations and also ensure they can access the legal framework for new data-sharing authorities under the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, also signed into law in 2019.

The Data Coalition further recommends that $50 million in immediate implementation funding be provided to chief data officers to improve data management. The Office of Management and Budget did not respond to a request for comment on the recommendations.

Development of a national secure data service within the executive branch is “long overdue,” and financial regulatory agencies should implement common business identifiers and other data reporting standards in proposed legislation like the Financial Transparency Act, the coalition recommends.

Government should expand access to restricted income and earnings data that might improve the gross domestic product indicator or that is collected by the National Directory of New Hires, according to the document.

The coalition recommends that basic public health data standards should be adopted to improve the national system for compiling COVID-19 data; congressional budget requests should be made available as structured data in a centralized database; and ethical artificial intelligence principles should be adhered to.

A data science occupational series established by the Office of Personnel Management would strengthen the federal data workforce, especially if diversity is promoted for women and persons of color, the coalition recommends.

Implementation of the Paperwork Reduction Act should also be improved, per the recommendations.

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Modern data intelligence tools are becoming more important as agencies prepare to meet new federal data management mandates. Even though most agencies understand how insights from data can fuel efficiency and effectiveness, far fewer understand how to harness data to better serve the mission, say experts in a new report on data management technology produced by FedScoop and underwritten by ASG Technologies.

Read the full report.

Today’s modern enterprise data intelligence platforms give chief information officers (CIOs) and chief data officers (CDOs) greater visibility into, and control over both structured and unstructured data their agency has in various systems. That includes understanding where that data resides — both on-prem or in multiple clouds — and how it is used, the report says. The key benefit of advanced enterprise data intelligence tools for agency leaders, the report concludes, is that it gives decision makers a more holistic view of strategically important data to improve mission outcomes.

At the same time, the tool enhances the IT department’s ability to reduce risks of disrupting daily data flows as they modernize their IT systems.

Federal requirements for data management and storage

New federal mandates are pushing CDOs and other agency leaders to meet stricter standards for data management and sharing — including the OPEN Government Data Act and the Foundations of Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, signed into law in January 2019, and the Federal Data Strategy action plan, issued by the Office of Management and Budget in December. These mandates strengthen government policy on records accessibility, data privacy and risk practices and prescribe new rules for managing data as strategic assets, among other things.

To meet the requirements and continue modernizing coherently, agency leaders need a more comprehensive view of their data estate, according to Ian Rowlands, director of product marketing at ASG Technologies. That means not only knowing the structure and meaning of an agency’s data assets, but also having a deeper understanding of an agency’s data flow.

“How your data is processed. What services is it supporting? Who are the interested stakeholders? And how is it deployed and transformed across platforms — that’s critical,” says Rowland.

Benefits of an enterprise data intelligence tool

The mandates require agencies to better manage risk and reduce the redundancy of data storage, but to get there, agencies will need capabilities that help them understand where critical data resides, says Wayne Monk, ASG Technologies’ senior vice president of global alliances and channel sales.

“From source to consumption, [agencies need to] map how the data travels, to clearly see what dependencies your data has prior to any modernization efforts,” Monk explained.

He shared how one of ASG’s enterprise customers recently benefited from consolidating its view of its data with the help of an enterprise data intelligence tool. Before implementing ASG’s Data Intelligence solution, the customer estimated it had likely stored taxpayer ID information in 20 or more locations across its systems. However, once they mapped out their data, officials discovered that information was actually being stored in 230 different locations.

The exercise enabled leaders to reduce that number to 12 storage locations, thereby reducing a slew of storage, backup resources and other costs while simultaneously improving data quality and trust.

Knowing what to do with structured and unstructured data

According to a study cited in the report, while most organizations have tools to manage structured data, only about 1 in 4 large organizations across a range of industries report having formal, enterprisewide content management systems for unstructured data assets such as documents, videos and images in many different file formats.

Experts in the report share how both structured and unstructured data play a critical role in transforming today’s enterprises. First there’s the effectiveness and efficiency of data to the organization’s mission objectives. Second, there’s the value using the data creates when implementing services.

Because of the growing volume of data moving to, or being pulled from, applications outside their traditional repositories and content systems, there is a greater need for enterprise tools that can bridge the divide between structured and unstructured data sets.

“Having the right enterprise data intelligence tools in place can give agencies a powerful leg up in being able to define, manage and track workflows through reports and dashboards to help collaboration teams understand where issues have arisen and how they were being addressed,” according to Rob Perry, ASG Technologies’ vice president of product marketing.

But perhaps more importantly, the tool also gives agency leaders a crucial platform to “properly involve multiple stakeholders in the governance of those projects,” he said.

Read more about how government agencies can modernize and meet federal data mandates faster with enterprise data intelligence tools.

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President Trump signed the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act in January, and with it the OPEN Government Data Act became law. This put in motion a deadline for CFO Act agencies to designate a nonpolitical chief data officer by July 13.

Of course, the concept of a CDO wasn’t totally new in government. A handful of agencies already had a person designated to that role — or some version of it — but the OPEN Government Data Act clarified and intensified the movement. The job generally entails overseeing an agency’s efforts to utilize data in its operations, and the push to codify it had been ongoing for several years.

The rollout of the requirement, however, was a bit rocky.

Early 2019’s long government shutdown took a toll on a wide range of functions, including the preparation for the implementation of this legislative mandate. The Office of Management and Budget, for example, didn’t issue official guidance on picking a CDO until July 12, the day before the legislation’s deadline.

By early August — the deadline for agencies publicly posting the name of a chosen CDO — the scorecard was mixed. Among agencies that didn’t previously have a CDO, some had successfully named a new one. Others had chosen to give the title to an existing official, such as the agency CIO or CFO.

Three agencies — the departments of Interior, State and Treasury — had not, as of early August, chosen a CDO. That has since changed: Interior chose Thomas (Tod) Dabolt, the Director of the Information and Technology Management Division, to be CDO sometime in August per a bio on the agency’s website. At State, Janice deGarmo is the acting CDO, a spokesperson told FedScoop. And Treasury purports to have a “joint management body” collectively filling the role.

But even at agencies that seemed to have it all squared away, there was some drama. At the Department of Health and Human Services, for example, Mona Siddiqui has held the title of CDO within the Office of the Chief Technology Officer since 2017 and was expected to continue to fill the role as part of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking requirement. CIO Jose Arrieta, however, started publicly calling himself the acting CDO in November. After some conflicting answers from different offices, the agency confirmed that Arrieta is indeed the acting CDO pending the hire of someone for the role. Siddiqui remains at her job within the office of the CTO.

The law also requires that the White House Office of Management and Budget will also create a Chief Data Officer Council, comprised of CDOs from across the government to “establish Governmentwide best practices for the use, protection, dissemination, and generation of data.” It’s unclear to what extent this council already exists and is holding meetings — the launch of the council is among the 20 action items in the recently released 2020 action plan for the Federal Data Strategy.

One thing is certain for 2020: The job of taming and utilizing the government’s vast data collections will only continue to expand as agencies continue to modernize their IT.

More 2019 in review:

The Pentagon’s JEDI cloud wars
A tense homestretch for 2020 census prep
Agencies embrace RPA — AI less so
CDM program continues to wait for nod from Congress
Building more tech capacity on Capitol Hill

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The Data Foundation and Deloitte interviewed preexisting CDOs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Defense, and Department of Health and Human Services for the “Future of Open Data” study and found that assigning part-time CDOs will “undermine the intent and spirit” of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act.

The act was signed into law in January, requiring all agencies to maintain comprehensive data catalogs and all CFO Act agencies to name nonpolitical CDOs by July 13. FedScoop found eight agencies had CDOs predating the law, and another eight designated one before the deadline. At least four — the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and National Science Foundation — have dual-hatted CDOs also serving as, say, chief information officer.

“I think it’s a very different role than the chief information officer,” David Mader, a chief strategy officer at Deloitte Consulting, told FedScoop. “When I think about the CDO, I think more about the kind of data that exists within the mission components of individual agencies.”

Mader served as Office of Management and Budget controller for almost three years under then-President Obama and co-led implementation of the Digital Accountability and Transparency (DATA) Act of 2014. While he understood agencies’ desire to name a CDO before the deadline, Mader said “it’s important to take the time to identify the right individual with the right skillset, so they can work across the entire components of the agency.”

For instance, the departments of State and the Interior both told FedScoop they had yet to choose a CDO.

“I think decisions have to be made as to prioritization of resources. Resources aren’t unlimited,” Mader said. “We had to do a lot of that while we implemented the DATA Act.”

Agencies should be able to appoint an independent CDO within their existing budgets, he added.

A small amount of funding will go a long way and can be reassessed as agencies’ data use increases, but currently “there is a lack of obvious budget to support CDOs,” according to the white paper.

“[T]here is a risk that agency stakeholders may fail to see the benefits of better data management and data sharing within and across agencies,” adds the document. “This could reinforce existing management and operational silos, or even result in new ones.”

For that reason, the report advises OMB to issue additional guidance on CDOs’ authorities and senior leaders to recognize them as part of agencies’ C-suites assisting with regulations and policymaking.

The CDOs interviewed for the paper worried they’d be relegated to a compliance role, when they need to engage stakeholders across mission and support functions to take stock of agencies’ data sets and ensure evidence-based decision-making.

Within the new law, the Open, Public, Electronic and Necessary (OPEN) Government Data Act also requires OMB to create a CDO Council capable of replicating best practices.

When NOAA saw high demand for its open data products, it formed partnerships with the private sector and academia facilitating continued access to its data. A CDO Council is a “very effective way” of doing that across agencies while ensuring consistent standards, Mader said.

“As technology and the use of data advances, I think it becomes even more critical going forward,” he said.

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The group, which is part of the IT Modernization Centers of Excellence initiative housed within the General Services Administration, recently posted a request for information seeking feedback on a draft RFQ that solicits a contractor to help HUD set up the new office. This RFI, along with four others from the  Cloud Adoption, Contact Center and Customer Experience teams, was posted Friday indicating that the CoE teams at HUD are beginning to move on to Phase II of their work at the agency.

“HUD has a need to establish an Office of the Chief Data Officer (OCDO) to manage data as a strategic asset and to create and implement an overall data management strategy,” the draft RFQ reads. “These high-level objectives reflect the need for improving and establishing organizational data standardization, integrity, availability, accessibility, usability, and sharing best practices at an enterprise level, to ultimately improve decision making throughout the agency.”

HUD says the ultimate goal is for the incoming CDO and attendant agencywide data strategy to empower the agency’s workforce and “strengthen fiscal responsibility and controls.”

Setting up a new office, though, will require careful change management — getting feedback from existing HUD data users and figuring out which new roles to hire for. These are some of the things the agency is looking for help with.

Anyone interested in responding to the RFI has until May 31 to fill out this Google form.

“We are excited to begin this next phase of our modernization efforts,” HUD Chief Operating Officer Ralph Gaines said in a statement. “We’re looking forward to seeing how these efforts will further transform the agency and make it more accountable to our customers.”

Phase II is the implementation stage of the CoE playbook. During this phase at HUD, in addition to setting up an office for the incoming chief data officer, CoE teams will accelerate the agency’s transition from paper- to web-based forms; consolidate to one contact center called HUDCentral;  and “build an agency-wide customer experience capability.”

The CoE project chose HUD for its second installation in September 2018. On Friday, GSA announced that the CoEs are headed to the Office of Personnel Management next.

HUD’s urgency to set up an office of the chief data officer doesn’t come out of nowhere. The OPEN Government Data Act, which was signed into law as part of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act in January, requires that all federal agencies designate a non-political chief data officer. Federal CIO Suzette Kent said recently that the White House Office of Management and Budget plans to release guidance on implementing this legislation within the next month.

“What’s important about defining that chief data officer role is also how it works with the CIO, privacy officer and evidence teams,” Kent said at an AFCEA Homeland Security Conference in Washington, D.C., at the end of April. “Because those have to be working in harmony in our agencies so that we’re protecting the data from the wrong people, we’re using it for the right things, and we’re ensuring that privacy and civil liberties are addressed.”

This story was updated on Monday, May 20, with additional information from GSA.

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Creating a CDO position would “help to encourage the publication of legislative information and a harmonization of data transparency efforts across the different silos, without being viewed as favoring any particular component,” Daniel Schuman, policy director at Demand Progress, said in his prepared testimony for the May 10 meeting of the Select Committee for the Modernization of Congress.

Schuman and other advocates say that a CDO would not only help Congress get a grip on what it produces, but also make data more readily available to the public. Another term for the job could be “chief transparency officer,” noted Joshua Tauberer, a technologist who built GovTrack.us and EveryCRSReport.com.

Such an office “would create a space for this big-picture thinking, and a person in this role would be in a position to coordinate the ongoing efforts in the House to ensure today’s successes continue,” he said.

Not everyone is totally sold — in part because Congress as a whole doesn’t behave quite like an executive branch agency.

“I’m not in favor of it or opposed to it,” Robert Reeves, deputy clerk of the House of Representatives, said when asked whether he thinks creating a CDO role for Congress is a good idea. He just has questions that need to be answered, he went on. For example — what would the CDO do that’s not already being done? And who would the role report to?

“I’d like to have a discussion,” Reeves said.

Congress has been big on promoting the power of chief data officers to executive branch agencies in recent months. In January, President Trump signed the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act and with it the OPEN Government Data Act became law.

The OPEN Government Data Act (OPEN stands for Open, Public, Electronic and Necessary) requires, among other things, that every executive branch agency designate a nonpolitical chief data officer and that the Office of Management and Budget create a Chief Data Officers Council consisting of these individuals.

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