Open Data/Transparency

The CIO Council released a new guide developed by the Federal Technology Investment Management community of practice and the General Services Administration’s Office of Governmentwide Policy, called Meeting IT Priorities with Technology Business Management.

Suzette Kent, who recently left after more than two years as the federal CIO, said lawmakers need to reconsider how they fund technology modernization efforts so they are not just a one-year effort.

The 2014 DATA Act set a new standard for government transparency by raising the bar for how much spending data agencies have to make available via public websites. But releasing more information doesn’t help much if the data is unreliable.

In today’s Federal Newscast, National Archives and Records Administration employees have spent the pandemic making Black history records more accessible to the public.

The chief data officer role compares to CIOs’ Y2K responsibilities, requiring significant relationship building across the enterprise when statutory authority may be lacking.

Members of Congress seized on the report’s findings as a wake-up call about gaps in the oversight of emergency pandemic spending and pointed to better data-sharing as a way to prevent the problem.

Chief data officers are one of the several new “chiefs” to arise in the government bureaucracy over the last decade. Relationship building with program agencies is their greatest challenge, and opportunity.

The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) is caught between Congress and the administration’s requirements when it comes to the amount of data and the source of the information to collect under the $2 trillion CARES Act.

The National Defense Strategy stresses the possibility of high intensity warfare with peer nations. But do the Defense Department’s spending priorities reflect the need to modernize its forces such that it could defeat those nations?

Proxy voting with or without quorum, video hearings, limiting member travel and maintaining social distancing at the Capitol have required lawmakers to reconsider the long-term viability of some well-established practices.

Forensic algorithms have become a routine tool for federal law enforcement agencies. The Government Accountability Office finds the algorithms are used to tie crime scene evidence to individuals with fingerprints or DNA on record.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is applying artificial intelligence to help improve medical care. The Agriculture Department is giving its eight mission areas 360-degree views of metrics to answer mission-focused questions.

FEMA’s goal of strengthening its financial transparency stems from the agency’s 2018-2022 strategic plan, which seeks to improve grants management and improve data analytics.

In today’s Federal Newscast, the world’s favorite web site right now is about to get a fresh chunk of federal grant money.