Page 44 - FCW, September/October 2020

FCWPerspectives Real-world data
management
The pandemic has put new demands on data teams, but old obstacles are still hindering agency efforts
For all the emphasis on artificial intelligence and advanced data science at government agencies, the fundamental aspects of
data management are too often overlooked.
In July, FCW gathered a
group of data specialists and IT leaders from across government to discuss how data strategies square with on-the-ground realities. The discussion was on the record but not for individual attribution (see Page 45 for the list of participants), and the quotes have been edited for length and clarity. Here’s what the group had to say.
Different missions, same problems
The data initiatives participants man- age ranged widely in scope and scale — from relatively small data lakes to massive COVID-19 response efforts. The obstacles, however, were remark- ably consistent: resource constraints, poorly documented datasets, parochi- al data owners, legacy systems not built for sharing, and fundamental tensions between sharing and security.
“For most of the larger systems I’ve seen, they never thought about shar- ing data and they never thought about identity and access management,” one participant said. “Their requirements are driven by what reports they want to run.” As a result, essential data ends up in highly customized systems that obstruct new uses.
The group agreed that good gov- ernance is essential, and authorities granted to agency CIOs (via the Fed- eral Information Security Manage- ment Act, Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act and Modernizing Govern- ment Technology Act) can be used to push for it. But some of the executives warned against becoming too rigid in that rule-making.
“I don’t think governance is ever set,” one argued. With data manage- ment, “you constantly have to be able to pivot. You have multiple layers of users. You have people who don’t understand anything and just want to digest data. You have people who are scientists and want to model and
be extremely creative. And then you have people who want to create their own tools or use a tool that they know and are comfortable with. And I didn’t even talk about who you’re sharing data with. So it’s a constantly morph- ing thing.”
That need for flexibility can’t be an excuse for ad hoc approaches, however. Poor governance leads to more silos and interoperability prob- lems, the speakers agreed. And as one warned: “If you don’t have a strategy for identity and access management and authentication, you will fail.”
COVID as a catalyst
For some agencies, this year’s pub- lic health crisis prompted huge new data initiatives to support testing, vac- cine research and financial relief. And across government, the shift to tele- work created new access challenges and threat-detection workloads.
“One of our biggest challenges that COVID highlighted was how dispa- rate our systems work from a data perspective and just not being able to pull all the data in one place,” one participant said.
The pandemic produced budget pressures as well. Multiple executives reported having to cancel or suspend contracts and bring certain data work back in-house. But in some cases, dol- lars could be redirected from unex- pected sources. “I didn’t have that many people traveling and probably
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