In the Federal CDO Council report to congress on the summary of its activities and accomplishments in its first year, the Council said that for FY2021, it will meet regularly to support CDOs in efforts to increase the strategic use of data and develop and implement communications activities for stakeholders both inside and outside of government.
The CDO Council – established to improve the United States’ ability to leverage data as a strategic asset – highlighted both its future plans for the group and its accomplishments over FY2020 in the report. In addition to implementing communications activities and continuing to improve data use, the CDO Council is set to “develop its strategic linkages with other interagency councils and develop resources that will support the data community.”
In FY2021, the CDO Council will implement member-developed projects identified in 2020 to help support innovation and advancement of data practices.
“These projects include developing a framework for sharing decision-support dashboards across agencies; creating a playbook for data skills training programs; investigating innovative approaches to analyzing public comments; and improving the ways we can use data to help manage wildland fire fuels,” the report reads.
In FY2020, the CDO Council highlighted accomplishments from its working groups that were established and were to have “a clearly defined scope, measurable goals and outcomes, and deadlines for completion of deliverables to the Council.”
The Operations Working Group – established in June 2020 – developed communication tools, norms, and processes for the CDO Council and working groups, in addition to collecting, curating, and tracking documentation “with respect to the Council’s key performance indicators,” among other accomplishments.
The COVID-19 Working Group – established in April 2020 – created a common COVID-19 data resource library for answering agency questions and sharing data and models, among other accomplishments.
The Data Skills and Workforce Development Working Group was able to convene two community-building discussion sessions. And the Data Sharing Working Group was established in October 2020 and accomplished convening in November to identify and prioritize key focus areas.
“By delivering data and analytics solutions to our leaders and field employees, we can have a major impact on how federal agencies more efficiently and effectively serve the public,” Federal CDO Council Chair Ted Kaouk said in a statement. “By implementing data governance, data workforce strategies, and data management best practices, we can enable access to high quality, timely data that will improve evidence-based policymaking. And by working to share data with strong privacy protections in place, we can help unlock the unique potential government data has to solve major public and private sector challenges.”
