Page 26 - GCN, August/September 2017

DATA ANALYTICS
Executive Viewpoint
DATA DRIVES DOT MISSION
Harnessing massive volumes of disparate data is a significant but valuable challenge.
Nearly every government agency is awash in huge volumes of increasingly varied data. Everyone acknowledges that data can help any agency fulfill its mission, but deriving value from an increasingly disparate and dynamic dataset is a challenge. GCN caught up with Daniel Morgan, Chief Data Officer at the Department of Transportation, to hear his thoughts on data analytics and how the DOT can best harness data to drive its mission forward.
What does data mean for the DOT?
We have a varied mission at the DOT. Unlike the corporate sector, our data is truly varied. Some of it is tabular; but it also includes images, video, and spatial data. That makes for an interesting data-management challenge, but we have to use data every day in our decision-making. It informs how we approach delivering our programs to ensure we have a
things we need to do. This is driving a liberation of analysts who have been stuck with subpar tools.
A big concern is having access to data that is both clean and reliable. What improvements can and need to be made?
This is indeed a challenge, and it breaks down into two kinds of dynamics. Take the census of fatal car crashes. That begins with a police crash report, and that’s a very human endeavor. It’s open to a great many challenges as it relates to accurately recording data, ensuring the data fields are complete and consistently filled out. Still, when there are inconsistencies and things missing in the data, we have to deal with that. Our systems and our analytics must be resilient enough to deal with human frailties and the needs of the real world. That’s never going to go away.
SPONSORED CONTENT
safe and efficient transportation system that serves everybody.
What do you think about such things as predictive analytics and how that can help?
“It turns out we need more and different data to measure those kinds of risk factors, and not all of it lives inside the DOT.”
It depends on what you’re trying
to predict. One thing I’m interested in is measuring risk in the transportation system. The number of roadway fatalities over the last two years went up eight percent. We went from losing around 32,000 lives just a couple of years ago, to 37,000 lives in 2016. It turns out we need more and different data to measure those kinds of risk factors, and not all of it lives inside the DOT.
Has the new generation of analytical tools given you any idea of new applications and services you can use to further the DOT’s mission?
It’s not really about new tools. There are decades-old ideas about what drives data analysis that are still applicable today. One is the increasing desire for quantification in a wider range of fields. Turning text into numbers means you can use that
for data analytics. Similarly, with sound and video, there are a bunch of things you can do when you turn data into numbers. Then there is the ever increasing power of computing. We no
longer need a supercomputer or mainframe to do some of the
What does all of this mean for system performance and security?
There’s a bunch of data coming off those systems that we could use to tune their performance and improve security. Then there’s the way we can architect our systems to better feed the analytical needs of the agency. That starts to point to ways we need to work through our system architectures to distribute the processing workload. That means thinking about cloud architectures that we can use to help us offload some of the processing from our network and servers.
What are some emerging technologies that could make a difference to how you manage and deploy data?
For the most part, I believe it’s about the evolution of things already in place. Technologies that make it simpler, easier, safer, and more secure to do things with data are definitely where I’m looking for the most advancement.
This interview continues at Carahsoft.com/innovation/DOT-data.
S-26