Industry Execs Say Draft Plan for Federal Data Strategy Should Address Literacy, Culture Change

Industry leaders recommended during a public forum several changes to the Office of Management and Budget’s draft action plan issued in June for the Federal Data Strategy and one of those is the need to focus on data literacy, Federal Times reported Monday.

Heather Gittings, a senior director of public sector and health care at data visualization firm Qlik, said the government should invest in employee training to build up literacy and implement the strategy. “Make sure that everyone is able to leverage the data and what comes out of it,” she noted.

Jane Wiseman, CEO of the Institute for Excellence in Government, said accountability for government data should reach the executive level to facilitate culture change.

“What I would love to see is an annual data strategy [where] … the cabinet secretary is held accountable for delivering,” Wiseman said. “Chief data officers are amazing, but no chief data officer can succeed without executive support.”

Vishal Kapur, a principal at Deloitte Consulting, said agencies should monitor their data quality as they tackle various projects to “create an enterprise view of data quality on the key subject areas at the organization level."