The essential shift: federal agencies move to modern analytics

In 2019, most business and government leaders understand that big data is one of their organization's most critical assets. However, for federal agencies that lack a modern analytics initiative, the tsunami of data can be overwhelming. And as a result, many agencies find themselves drowning in information, unable to tap into the wealth of insights their data holds-actionable information that's needed to reshape processes and make informed decisions.

Leveraging big data is a top-of-mind issue, as recent legislation mandates that agencies must be both transparent and accountable for their budgets and programs as they deliver the mission of the organization. The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (often known as the Data Act) requires all federal organizations to provide consistent, reliable, and searchable financial data that shows how effectively agencies are investing taxpayer dollars (via USAspending.gov).

The President's Management Agenda cites Data Accountability and Transparency as one of three key drivers of federal government transformation. A critical component of the PMA are the Cross-Agency Priority (CAP) goals that outline how federal agencies will collaborate and cooperate on achieving the goals and objectives of the PMA. The CAP goal of leveraging data as a strategic asset and the proposed Federal Data Strategy call for improved use of data for decision-making and accountability. This strategy will lead to greater access and use of data by a variety of internal and external stakeholders-including business entities and the general public.

But what's necessary to implement that strategy? This blog post discusses the attributes of a modern analytics platform that are essential to successful data initiatives.