Page 24 - FCW, Sept/Oct 2018
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 IT MODERNIZATION ENABLING DATA TO ADVANCE CITIZEN SERVICES
  mechanisms for modernization projects within agencies to be administered by the General Services Administration (GSA).
“Although the IT Modernization Plan itself doesn’t address data directly, it does provide a vehicle
to pay for data analytics, among other efforts, by establishing working capital funds in each agency,” Homme said.
Last fall, the White House Office of American Innovation announced a Centers of Excellence
(CoE) initiative to accelerate the modernization of infrastructure and legacy systems. GSA stood up five CoE teams, leading with the Department of Agriculture as its first CoE customer, in focus areas ranging from IT infrastructure optimization to data analytics.
RESHAPING GOVERNMENT’S APPROACH TO DATA
The federal government has traditionally taken a piecemeal approach to data. Information typically resided where it was generated, often stuck in a
silo where it could not easily be accessed by other agencies or even parts of the same agency.
“Data is usually managed program by program, tied directly to mission applications,” said David Rubin, principal director of Azure Government Engineering for Microsoft. “A lot of this has to do with history and culture where mission groups are intimately familiar with their programs and maintaining the data related to that program.”
Government has made efforts to move away from that model, dating back to the 1996 Clinger Cohen Act, which aimed to bring a private sector approach to technology and establish chief information officers (CIOs) in agencies with detailed roles
and responsibilities. The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) in 2014 sought to strengthen the role of agency CIOs through deeper involvement in strategic planning and programming and providing performance metrics on initiatives. Included with the goals was the directive to consolidate and optimize data centers.
DATA IS INCREASINGLY BECOMING A SOURCE OF PUBLIC VALUE CREATION.
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