The Consumer Product Safety Commission is a big data agency, but the amount of information it collects and consumes isn’t a problem — yet.

Rather, the CPSC’s biggest challenges are around the types of data it collects and how fast the information comes to the agency.

Jim Rolfes, the CPSC’s chief information officer, said the agency is dealing with the two other ‘Vs’ of big data.

“When people talk about big data, they usually talk about it in terms of the three ‘Vs’—volume, variety and velocity. Almost always people are thinking about it in terms of volume, and I don’t think we currently have really an issue with big data in terms of volume, at least not today, maybe at some point in the future there will be a situation where we have a whole lot more data and more data sources and we may have a big data issue from that,” he said. “But from a variety and velocity perspective, those are areas where CPSC could potentially benefit from big data approaches.”

The commission receives data from several sources, including from hospitals about injuries, manufacturers and other federal, state and local government partners.

Rolfes said this means the variety of data and the different forms it comes in from the different sources pose a big challenge.

“Exploring big data in terms of variety is an area that has some merits, and we are looking at open source data technologies to evaluate whether that’s something we can move in to,” he said. “We also are looking at velocity. We have some regulatory time frames where things have to move through certain processes and we have dates, times and days where certain things have to happen. If we can get data prepared for processing faster that will help us meet those timelines so big data may be a way to help us do that. And more broadly, if we can get data processed and structured into forms that can help make decisions, the organization draw conclusions and make decisions on products or safety in general then that means unsafe situations can be addressed quicker.”

Rolfes said initially CPSC is addressing the big data variety and velocity challenges internally, asking employees for ideas and approaches to build capabilities.

CPSC doesn’t have a central authoritative database where all this data lives. So Rolfes said he’s looking at creating a “data lake,” a place where data can be stored for secondary or ancillary purposes.

“We are interested in how we can do that in a way that’s effective, scalable and also cost effective, which leads us to exploring things like open source and cloud services,” he said.

Rolfes said the cloud option is a good one, but not something the commission is using on a wide scale.

He said among the first major applications that CPSC will move a cloud platform is its Web content management system.

“I think that hosting our own internal cloud is something we will have to evaluate the cost benefit and risk implications, but my sense is we can probably be more efficient in the cloud in that space,” he said. “I’m a big fan of open source. I think there are some cost advantages to that. There’s the collaborative nature of open source and there’s the transparency, especially if we are looking to share information, and a lot of the information we collect we do want to share, so I think the use of open source platforms can help facilitate that.”

Rolfes said CPSC still is in the informal research phase of where open source can fit into its technology architecture.

Along with big data, Rolfes said another major priority is moving its use of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) from a pilot to full production across the agency.

He said he expects most of the agency to be on VDI by the end of the year.

“We expect VDI to help reduce our operating costs, provide a more consistent users experience, help eliminate system conflicts, increase security and enhance our e-discovery capabilities,” he said. “It’s also going to be a key to enabling a bring-your-own-device effort.”

Rolfes said he was on the initial VDI pilot, and while at first had some doubts, in the end it worked smoothly.

A third related priority that all of this technology will enable is around risk assessments.

Rolfes said the goal is to implement a methodology to help CPSC identify the most important shipments in need of inspection at ports.

“We are a small agency with limited resources so using a risk based approach to help focus our resources is vital,” he said. “We can’t inspect all shipments so we need to work with partners like Customs and Border Protection to identify characteristics of shipments that are most critical to inspect.”

The CIO’s office is working with the mission side to develop software that includes business rules to better automate this process in the field.

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