Trends in data-driven decision-making in government

In May, David Mader, the Office of Management and Budget’s controller, quantified the amount of data the government produces as huge. That’s probably an understatement.

There are no good estimates about how much data “huge” really is.   For instance, the Data.gov portal has more than 192,000 data sets.

But with the growth of connected systems, commonly known as the Internet of Things, as well as better sensors and more devices, the amount of data agencies, and particularly the Defense Department, have to manage will only continue to grow.

This means agencies must develop a data governance strategy and processes.

The Federal Trade Commission reports that with any data there is a lifecyle and it’s divided into four phases: collection; compilation and consolidation; data mining and analytics; and use.

In each of those phases, agencies need to consider specific steps to ensure the data is usable, secure and not overwhelming their decision makers.

There are several ongoing data governance initiatives across the government.

Most recently, the Office of Management and Budget updated its data center consolidation initiative with a new draft policy.

Among the things the policy highlights is giving CIOs a priority order when they decide they need more storage or infrastructure. OMB wants CIOs to look to the cloud first, shared services internal to the government second and an agency-owned data center only third and it must be one that already is optimized.

But it’s more than data centers when we talk about data governance.

It’s tools that make the data useful and it’s the accessibility to ensure decision-makers have access from anywhere and at any time.

IDC, a market intelligence firm, detailed a big data maturity model highlighting five phases: ad hoc; opportunistic, which is a department-level siloed strategy, Repeatable, which takes the strategy down to the business unit; managed, which takes the strategy across business units; and finally optimized, which is an enterprisewide strategy where processes and tools are being used to their greatest capabilities.

Most agencies are still in the early stages of managing and using big data. They are still sorting out everything from cybersecurity to compliance to ensuring their information isn’t stale and remains usable.

Moderator

Jason Miller, Federal News Radio

Jason Miller is an executive editor and reporter with Federal News Radio. As executive editor, Jason helps direct the news coverage of the station and works with reporters to ensure a broad range of coverage of federal technology, procurement, finance and human resource news.As a reporter, Jason focuses mainly on technology and procurement issues, including cybersecurity, e-government and acquisition policies and programs.

Panelists

Janice Glover-Jones, Chief Information Officer, Defense Intelligence Agency

Ms. Glover-Jones currently serves asthe DIA Chief Information Officer where she isresponsible forthe day to day management of a global Information Technology (IT) organization with approximately3,000 employees. In this position, Ms. Glover-Jones is spearheading a program to baseline the CIO organization’s key business activities, while also ensuring continued mission support to her global customers

Dr. John M. Pellegrino, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Army (Strategic Integration)

Dr. John M. Pellegrino was selected for the Senior Executive Service in September 1998. He leads the strategy development, resource requirements, and overall business transformation processes within the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy, and Environment.

From January 2011 to May 2015, Dr. Pellegrino served as the Director of the Computational and Information Sciences Directorate and Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the Army Research Laboratory (ARL). In that role he is responsible for fundamental research and its transition in the areas of Network and Information Sciences, Cyber Defense, High Performance Computing, and Battlefield Environments. This includes research program development and coordination, technology transition, and support to current forces, as well as responsibility for laboratory network operations. He also had technical oversight of the state-of-the-art high performance computing assets, computational capabilities, and wide area networking methodologies for ARL, Army, and DoD.

From July 2012 until March 2013, Dr. Pellegrino served as the Acting Director of ARL, the Army’s premier laboratory for fundamental research and analysis. ARL conducts research and analysis in weapons and materials, sensors and electron devices, computational and information sciences, human research and engineering, vehicle technology, and survivability and lethality analysis. ARL’s Army Research Office executes the Army extramural basic research program in scientific and engineering disciplines. The laboratory consists of approximately 2,000 military and civilian employees with annual revenue of over $1 billion. From September 1998 to January 2011, he served as the Director of the Sensors & Electron Devices Directorate of the Army Research Laboratory, with responsibility for fundamental research and its transition in the areas of sensors, electronics, and signal processing.

Gary Wyckoff, Chief Information Officer, Office of Naval Research 

Mr. Wyckoff serves as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Office of Naval Research (ONR). In this role, he manages and provides strategic guidance to all of ONR’s Information Technology (IT) teams: Cybersecurity, Network Operations, Project Management and Business Financial Management. Mr. Wyckoff leads the development of policies, plans, architectures, standards, and process guidance with the goal of achieving and sustaining interoperability, security, and IT business transformation consistent with ONR’s vision, goals and mission. Additionally, he collaborates with other departments within ONR to develop strategic guidance and implement cost saving efficiencies in the Information Management (IM)/IT/cyberspace environments. Mr. Wyckoff is also responsible for developing and maintaining an ONR-wide information security program, including associated policies.

Jody Houck, Executive Director, U.S. DoD & U.S. Intelligence Business Sector, Veritas

Jody Houck is the Executive Director for Veritas US Department of Defense and US Intelligence business sector.   She joined Veritas in April of this year and prior to her role her she was the Executive Director of US Inteligence business sector of EMC.

Jody leads Veritas’s growth and integrated business plan for the U.S. Department of Defense and Intelligence Community. Her team works to enable the transformation of how the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community, manages, governs and transforms big data into information. Her team helps the Department of Defense and US Intelligence Community leverage Veritas’s innovative information technology and the team is leading the community on their journey to the private, public and hybrid cloud.

Working closely with various Veritas groups, Jody manages the sales and oversees the deployment of technology solutions that enhance US Department of Defense and US national intelligence systems, to improve mission operations, secure information sharing, and rapidly deliver intelligence to ensure the US has decision advantage. With more than 25 years of technology and business experience, Jody is a strong advocate for the public sector applying information technology from any mobile device to the data center to increase collaboration, innovation, and productivity.

Jody leads an integrated team, who focus on customer transitions, industry transformations, and Veritas innovations in areas including Information Managment, Information Governance, Information and Application Availability, and Big Data. Their efforts enable Veritas to lead in the transformation to a 21st-century DOD and Intelligence Community IT Architectures that will leverage service providers (Public Cloud), private and hybrid cloud technologies, while delivering IT efficiencies inline with Federal mandadates.

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