The course was designed to educate congressional staff on federal data policy, how to better work with government data, and to modernize government data via new policy ideas.

Staff and policy aides from the offices of Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and Reps. Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and Mark Takano, D-Calif., among others, took part in the program run by the University of California at Berkeley and USAFacts, a nonprofit and nonpartisan civic initiative focused on making government data more accessible. The cohort was 60% Democrats, 20% Republicans and 20% nonpartisan, according to organizers.

Forty-two staffers enrolled in the program, which began in February and will conclude this month. The program included eight classroom sessions held remotely with a mix of live and recorded lectures and opportunities for in-person meetings in D.C.

“The Data Skills for Congress program, launched in 2023, equips member and professional staff with skills to use data in policy-making and constituent services, and write legislation to improve public data,” USAFacts said in a blog post last week.

“This free program isn’t just an education in data literacy in order to shape policies that ensure accurate, usable data flows within government. It’s a catalyst for congressional modernization and a rallying cry for greater data use across Congress,” the group added.

The Data Skills for Congress class is the first program of its kind approved by the House and Senate Ethics Committees and is intended to be a first step toward providing skills and context for data policy and practices.

Some members of Congress, like Kilmer, are pushing for greater data-driven decision-making in Congress through recently introduced bipartisan legislation that would create a commission on “evidence-based policymaking” within Congress to ensure policymaking is based more on federal data and facts rather than opinions. The bill would also push for the creation of a chief data office responsible for cultivating congressional data strategies.

The Data Skills for Congress organizers say they exceeded enrollment goals in this first program by 66% and 87% of participants reported they would recommend the program to their peers. 

“I learned a lot and I think these are basic skills all congressional staff should have,” one congressional participant said, according to USAFacts.

The pilot program was focused on five key objectives related to U.S. open data topics:

• Educate participants on existing U.S. data policies through seminars led by data policy experts;
• Develop an understanding of open data challenges and technologies common in the U.S.;
• Build basic skills in data collection and visualization;
• Apply new open data knowledge to produce reports based on publicly available data or draft policy to improve government data; and
• Create relationships with other congressional staff who share an interest in open data and its use in Congress.

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Over the course of a two-year period that ended in February 2022, there were 32,179 failed attempts to access GSA-managed facilities through physical access control systems, the IG found in its audit, the results of which were published Tuesday. But based on its investigation, the inspector general found GSA was lax about using that data to inform how it identified, assessed and managed physical risks to those buildings, as recommended by federal guidance.

It’s not uncommon for PIV cardholders to be denied entry to a physical building, particularly if their card is expired or disabled. Cardholders are often also denied entry after attempting to access an area they don’t have permission to visit or when trying to visit outside of permitted hours.

But upon extrapolating the data, some startling trends appeared: One building had 4,164 failed access attempts over the two years whereas the average during that time was 244; and one cardholder had 1,963 failed access attempts compared to an average of two for nearly all others.

“These failed access attempts may have potential security implications,” the IG wrote in its report. Eight of the top 10 buildings with the most failed access attempts contain child-care facilities or security-sensitive agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Social Security Administration, and U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The safety and security of the tenants and children in these buildings are a major concern.”

Based on that, the IG reached out to GSA leadership — which admitted to not reviewing the data — and a sample of federal facilities managers to investigate how often they received data or trends about those failed access attempts. According to the watchdog, of the 15 managers contacted, eight did not receive data regularly, and the rest were only sent data about the previous day.

“The building managers do not receive any kind of trend analysis of the access card data, which could be used to identify suspicious access attempts,” the report explains. “Access card data can be filtered to show records by building, door, region, date, individual, or event type. With this capability, it is possible to highlight higher-risk scenarios and show trends, such as an unauthorized cardholder repeatedly attempting to gain access to secured areas or an unauthorized cardholder who is repeatedly attempting to gain access to a facility outside of regular operating hours.”

GSA agreed to all of the IG’s recommendations to take action to improve its use of physical access control system data. It did, however, note that the rejection rate was expected to be higher during this period because of the COVID-19 pandemic when many PIV cards expired and credentialing stations were closed. But, in the case of individuals or buildings with a high number of failed attempts, GSA said it agreed with the IG to better monitor access card data to identify trends that may need follow-up.

Tuesday’s report comes after the GSA IG in November 2020 issued similarly critical results of an audit that found the agency was unable to account for about 15,000 PIV cards issued to contract employees and failed to recover 445 such cards from those who failed background checks.

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Alan Davidson—the assistant secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and the NTIA administrator—said the agency had issued a request for comment “on how we can increase our vigilance at the intersection of privacy and civil rights,” during an event hosted by the Georgetown Law school.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is President Biden’s principal advisory body on tech and telecom policy issues, will focus its inquiry on discriminatory data practices related to: online job discrimination based on demographic characteristics; apps that collect and sell location data about user movement, particularly dating and religious apps; and the heightened cost of data breaches on low-income communities.

“Our inquiry will help us analyze the outsized consequences that data practices can have on marginalized communities, and make specific recommendations on solutions,” Davidson said. “We know that addressing the disproportionate harms borne by these communities will take more than just privacy reforms. But increased protections are an important step toward that goal.”

The NTIA’s initiative is meant to bolster the Biden Administration’s six ‘Principles for Enhancing Competition and Tech Platform Accountability’ announced last September. The Big Tech reform rules were emphasized in Biden’s recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, call for “robust federal protections for Americans’ privacy” and an end to “discriminatory algorithmic decision-making.”

Building on the previously announced six principles, Davidson said the need for a federal privacy framework “is especially acute when we consider the impact on disadvantaged groups.” 

Davidson added that data privacy invasions can be felt more starkly by marginalized communities due to the difficulty for facial recognition tools to accurately identify people of color and the problematic ways in which phone apps can collect and store sensitive information related to users’ sexual orientation or religion. 

“Data collection and sharing creates the risk of new digital discrimination replicating previous forms of profiling, redlining and exclusion,” said Davidson. “We are concerned about how these practices can hinder economic and social opportunities, from housing and jobs to health and safety.”

Federal contractors providing government departments with HR services are already held accountable for computer-based tools that discriminate against potential employees with disabilities under a joint initiative launched in May by the Department of Justice and the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission.

The NTIA data privacy request for comment builds on the work conducted by the agency during three listening sessions. Comments will be due 45 days from publication in the Federal Register.

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After mounting public pressure, lawmakers passed provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2022 requiring the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Defense Department to submit “a report on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP)” to appropriate congressional committees by Oct. 31 2022, and annually thereafter through 2026. A classified version of ODNI’s 2022 annual report was delivered to Congress on Wednesday, several months after it was due, and an unclassified version was released publicly Thursday.

In that public, 12-page review, officials provide brief details about “366 additional reports of UAP” since the government’s preliminary assessment identified 144 reports — a total of 510 cataloged accounts to date. 

The “majority of new” UAP reporting originates from Navy and Air Force aviators and operators who “witnessed UAP during the course of their operational duties and reported the events” to DOD’s now-defunct UAP Task Force and its recently formed All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, through “official channels,” the report states. 

“Broadly speaking, when it comes to the types of processes and procedures that have been established, [AARO], as you highlighted, has closely worked with each of the service branches to come up with a streamlined reporting system to be able to collect that information. And then, in addition to the military branches, it is also working with the interagency — so, organizations like NOAA, the Coast Guard, and the Department of the Energy, just to name a few,” Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told DefenseScoop during a press briefing on Friday.

“And so, by establishing those reporting procedures, what it does, and I think you’ll see this in the report, is it allows the collection of data, and more data allows us to be a little bit more rigorous in terms of how we go after investigating these incidents,” Ryder added.

Notably, when AARO was established by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks in July 2022, the Pentagon also updated its official terminology for UAP to mean unidentified anomalous phenomena — and no longer unidentified aerial phenomena — to account for reported objects that appear to move between mediums. NASA quickly followed suit.

DefenseScoop confirmed with a Pentagon spokesperson on Thursday that, while all the future annual UAP reports through 2026 will account for that update and include data on anomalous phenomena, this 2022 review refers to airborne happenings in U.S. airspace.

In that public assessment, officials wrote that “UAP continue to represent a hazard to flight safety and pose a possible adversary collection threat” to the U.S., at this point. However, improved coordination between the intelligence community, DOD and other agencies has resulted in more data sets that span air, sea and space. 

“AARO, in coordination with the IC, is focused on identifying solutions to manage and alleviate the resulting data problem, including the intake, indexing, visualization, and analysis of that data across multiple security domains,” officials wrote. 

Of the 366 newly-identified reports, 26 have been characterized as unmanned aircraft systems or other drone-like entities; 163 have been characterized as balloons or balloon-like items; and 6 have been attributed to clutter, like birds or debris, they noted. 

Those reports are not yet fully resolved — but again, some progress has been made.

At this point, though, the government also has evidence of 171 uncharacterized and unattributed UAP reports that each requires further analysis for clarity, according to the review. 

In an online response to the report, Chris Mellon — a national security expert who previously served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — argued that it demonstrates how “major progress in developing an effective government capability for investigating the UAP enigma and kicking down the doors of ignorance that for far too long have prevented progress in understanding the phenomenon.”

The war unfolding in Ukraine and recent conflicts in Armenia and in Yemen are revealing how drones are increasingly integral in modern military conflicts, another factor that plays into investigating UAPs.

“Therefore, any capability that helps to reduce clutter and identify genuine aerial threats is of great value to the military and national security. In that regard, Congressional initiatives related to UAP are already paying dividends by improving our ability to distinguish legitimate threats from innocuous balloons and other airborne clutter,” Mellon wrote.

Still, in his view, the new report also “presents the bare minimum of information needed to comply with Congress’ request” for an unclassified assessment. He noted that there was no indication if the uncategorized reports captured so far were in space or underwater, or they were attributable to foreign governments. 

“Unanswered questions abound,” Mellon wrote.

Since the IC’s first preliminary UAP assessment in June 2021, “UAP reporting has increased, partially due to a concentrated effort to destigmatize the topic” and instead recognize the safety risks or adversarial activity it implies, officials wrote in the first NDAA-mandated UAP annual assessment. They also expressed confidence that AARO, and its new analytic process being applied to its expanding portfolio of reports “will increase resolution of UAP events.”

Among other notable inclusions, the 12-page public assessment confirmed that there have “been no encounters with UAP confirmed to contribute directly to adverse health-related effects to the” observers to date. Military aviators in the past have reportedly experienced adverse health effects with symptoms like that of the mysterious Havana syndrome, which has impacted U.S. spies and diplomats.

When asked by DefenseScoop during the Pentagon briefing on Thursday whether the department or ODNI could share more details about what any anomalous health incidents associated with UAP sightings actually ended up being due to, Ryder said that he did not have further information to provide at the time.

“I would say, broadly speaking, I think one of the key points in this report, you know, is given the potential hazard that UAPs do present — notably — there’s been no reported collisions of military aircraft, or U.S. aircraft rather, and UAPs. But in terms of those specifics, I’d refer you back to the report,” Ryder said.

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Data is the backbone of every business decision today. However, organization leaders need to ask themselves two key questions: Are the right people getting the right information to make decisions? And are they empowered with the knowledge necessary for discerning critical insights from their data to make insights actionable?

Organizations are still struggling with these objectives. According to a survey by Ventana Research, most organizations (72%) estimated that one-half or less of their workforce are using the available analytics tools when needed. That’s despite advances in business intelligence platforms that make the gathering, analyzing, and distilling of information more accessible than ever to today’s workforce. The stakes are only getting higher when it comes to democratizing enterprise data. By 2025, data creation is forecasted to surpass 180 zettabytes, more than double the amount in 2020. And the business intelligence market—which helps transform data into actionable insights—is similarly experiencing explosive growth, reaching annual sales of $43 billion by 2028.

Keeping pace with all that data and up-and-coming analytics tools is a strategic imperative for avoiding disruptions to operations and making better-informed tactical business decisions. For public sector leaders, taking a modern approach to business intelligence translates into better-executed missions. That includes adopting BI platforms that can:

• facilitate faster decisions with action-oriented workflows,
• offer the ability to control multi-source data at an enterprise scale,
• improve agility with reusable object models,
• and provide greater insight accessibility.

Broadening BI’s power

But the value and promise of business intelligence can only benefit organizations if the right users have access to the data and analytics processes. Meaning not just analysts or C-suite decision-makers but those tasked with managing and monitoring front-line tasks that drive an organization’s mission.

One challenge common to private as well as public sector organizations is the need to break down data silos. In the past, the primary users of BI tools and applications were the IT departments. But as BI tools have become more interactive, intuitive, and user-friendly, new levels of data integration and collaboration between IT and business owners have become possible. Those advances are also fueling greater data democratization by unearthing insights historically trapped in data silos.

The experts at Ventana Research write, “Adopting user-friendly techniques such as natural language processing and augmented intelligence help deliver insights that are easier to understand. And by generating insights automatically and delivering them in ways that are easily accessible and understood by the workforce, it will increase the benefits of the data an organization collects and processes.”

Access to timely and reliable data and analytics is critical to the success of any enterprise—whether it’s in finance, contracting, operations, or logistics and supply chain. Organizations can no longer afford to cultivate an inner circle of data experts; instead, they need to cultivate expertise throughout their entire workforce.  

Shortening the hiring cycle.

We’ve seen how the use of real-time data and available AI tools can transform decision-making in a variety of applications. One example, with wide applicability, involves federal hiring practices. Hiring talent for mission-critical positions can take many months, and vacancies can overwhelm staff and jeopardize mission delivery.

That was the case for a federal law enforcement agency, which at one point faced more than 1,000 vacancies across different job functions. So the agency’s Human Resources department leveraged MicroStrategy’s BI platform and an ML-prediction model that forecasted vacancies and how long it would take to bring new employees on board. Supervisors were then given data ownership to forecast staffing plans and analytic tools to identify more productive decision-making factors. Within a year, vacancies were reduced by 80%.

Thumbs-up all around.

As of November 2022, MicroStrategy obtained FedRAMP certification, which means more opportunities for agencies to benefit from our cloud-based analytics platform. The certification will allow us to continue helping government customers make data-driven decisions on a larger scale by leveraging the latest offerings of BI platforms and tools.

But the real benefit comes when organization leaders put data and analytics tools into the hands of everyone in the workforce, from the office to the field, and teach them the best data practices for improved mission capabilities. One federal agency said in a MicroWorld public sector webinar that “[data] has become so ingrained in our business operations that we now have product managers to serve as the bridge between the technology, the training, and the people leveraging that data to ensure that it’s used strategically and delivers the best business outcomes.”

Another example involved managing the flow of daily reports at the Transportation Security Administration. Using MicroStrategy’s BI platform, TSA was able to deliver more than 45,000 reports per day to more than 40,000 users. According to a TSA executive in a recent webinar. “It supports a full suite of reporting styles, and we find that’s very helpful in being able to provide airport operations data where and when it’s needed. There’s just so much information in the tool—we have recognized over $18 million in cost savings and avoidance each year using it,” he said.

On top of FedRAMP Certification, MicroStrategy enterprise analytics platform earned top marks with Gartner analysts this past May for the platform’s outstanding reporting, security, governance and catalogs, and enterprise analytics capabilities, scoring well above the market average on all four of these enterprise analytics capabilities. Analysts noted MicroStrategy’s governance capability was powerful at telemetry, usage analytics, and facilitating the promotion of certified content; for security, MicroStrategy “offers best-in-class auditing, authentication and authorization.”

Learn more about how we can help your organization unlock the business value of your data at World23. This four-day conference features keynote events, 80+ sessions on enterprise and embedded analytics, and education courses for platform users.

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Traditional encryption protects data at rest or in transit but not when it’s in use by on-premise or cloud applications, and disk encryption solutions degrade performance and can lock users out.

Encryption-in-use secures only underlying sensitive data, regardless of location, and analyzes requests in real time to block suspicious ones. According to Holcombe, it could help USPTO protect sensitive claims information because the technology is less likely than traditional forms of encryption to degrade performance.

“I have an obligation to disseminate all public data as best I can, but the things that I need to keep secret are the claims that the patent applicants file with us,” Holcombe said. “And it’s only good from the first application date to 18 months later, then something has to happen to it.”

Until then claims are USPTO’s version of “top secret,” he added.

The companies developing encryption-in-use are mostly startups, but Holcombe isn’t interested in those adding it to USB devices. He wants the capability in the data center.

“That’s where your cloud storage companies come in because they’re buying that technology from these little guys, but I want to get it before it’s sold to them,” Holcombe said. “If it comes wrapped with [Amazon Web Services], that’s fine.”

USPTO operates on a three-year, procure-and-replace cycle and is working with different tech companies to satisfy all the pillars of the federal zero-trust strategy: users, apps, data, network and devices.

The agency is trying to mature multi-factor authentication to protect users and working with Venafi on a device management solution. USPTO has a partnership with Netskope for secure access service edge. 

“We’re looking to spread that because that’s just one solution of many for the [zero-trust architecture],” Holcombe said.

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Based on its 2022 Survey of Federal CDOs conducted with Guidehouse, the Data Foundation holds a federal CDO within the White House would improve the visibility and capabilities of the entire community.

While the survey found more than 60% of agency CDOs have at least five Federal Data Strategy (FDS) 2021 Action Plan items in progress or completed, less than 20% reported they have most or all of the resources needed for full implementation.

“The reason why we aren’t moving forward is because there’s no leadership,” said Katy Rother, senior advisor for federal policy implementation at the Data Foundation, during a webinar on the survey results. “Putting people in a position of leadership, giving them a seat at the table to prioritize the resources that are available, is the only way to get this done.”

Though the Federal CDO Council released its 2021 Action Plan in October of that year, some agencies hadn’t finished implementing the 2020 Action Plan and spent the beginning of fiscal 2022 conducting quality assessments of data infrastructure, skills and assets.

The most commonly completed action items are gathering and assessing data to answer priority questions and improving data inventories.

CDOs face a number of hurdles completing the rest, namely the many data requirements contained in not only the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, OPEN Government Data Act and Geospatial Data Act but five executive orders and memos that lack any funding for data collection, management and retrieval. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law added even more, sometimes vague, data management requirements for specific agencies, said Jason Duke, CDO at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Duke’s Data Division has grown from one to 14 employees ensuring metadata is created for all data and uploaded to a catalog linked to repositories containing complete datasets, as well as captured in data management plans via a centralized template. He also ensured that his agency’s Data Management Policy was updated and a Data Management Handbook and Data Standards Policy created. 

The Data Division created a SharePoint site updated daily, devoted a staff member to customer experience, and is currently working on minimum standards for spatial and aspatial metadata, but Duke wants more resources.

CDOs seek better infrastructure and governance practices, more staff and training, increased OMB check-ins, extra funding, and greater clarity on how their role differs from that of the chief information officer, according to the Data Foundation’s survey.

The Data Foundation recommended that OMB include increased funding for CDOs in its fiscal 2023 budget request and clarify the role of the CDO with guidance mandated by the Evidence Act. The Federal CDO Council’s sunset period should be eliminated, as it’s proven its value, according to the report.

“We’re being asked, as CDOs in the federal government, to do more and more regarding data,” Duke said. “And we’re not really as a whole receiving additional budgeted monies targeted for that specific purpose.”

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As part of an ongoing pilot, Treasury had the IRS provide the bureau with data it used to build a model of race and ethnicity at the micro and person level. The bureau’s model was then matched with other IRS data to uncover biases.

The Census Bureau didn’t want to share publicly provided survey data with the IRS, lest it be used to collect taxes, but recognized tax data lacks race and ethnicity codes the bureau uses.

“We’re not sharing the data,” said Ron Jarmin, deputy director of the Census Bureau, at the ACT-IAC Imagine Nation ELC 2022 on Monday. “But we’re sharing insights from the model that’s based on our data, that makes their data model much more powerful.”

Not only can Treasury verify equitable distribution in the timing of tax refunds, but it can compare the timing of check mail deliveries with that of direct deposits.

Meanwhile the IRS and other agencies can be confident the Census Bureau won’t release the findings, Jarmin said.

“We’re hoping that this is something that we’ll be able to do with other state, federal and local government agencies to help them,” he added.

The Census Bureau has used administrative data from other agencies for decades, but now it’s looking to use unstructured data. For instance, the bureau is trying to use transaction-level data from retailers for more timely, granular sales statistics to improve its own price analyses, Jarmin said.

“If we can do more accurate statistics using the sort of unstructured, transaction-level data that gets generated every time you purchase something, we should be able to produce far better statistics,” Jarmin said. “And maybe stop doing surveys every month of retailers across the country.”

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