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Strategic Objective

Transform the Department’s data capacity to enhance the value, accessibility and usability of Commerce data for government, business and the public. (ESA, NOAA, NIST, NTIS)

Strategic Objective

Themes:

General Science, Space, and Technology

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Overview
Progress Update

Overview

The Department of Commerce collects, stores, and analyzes a treasure trove of data, including data on the economy, our population, and our environment. This data is fundamental to our mission and is used for the protection of life and property and to enhance economic growth. However, the capacity to analyze and disseminate all that data is significantly constrained. To meet these needs, Commerce data must be accessible, useable, reliable, and comprehensive.

Barriers to accessing and using the data must be minimized in order to realize the potential value of the data

Progress Update

The Department of Commerce (DOC), in consultation with the Office of Management and Budget, has highlighted this objective as a focus area for improvement.

Data from the decennial census, the GDP, and data from NIST and NOAA research have long been principal products of the Department. The DOC FY 2014-18 Strategic Plan changes the paradigm for Commerce data from product to competitive advantage. Risks are inherent in this novel look at data but given the breakneck speed of Big Data revolution and the imperative of data security, transforming the Department’s data capacity must be a focus area. The shift requires a new governance approach, new architecture, unprecedented collaboration among agencies and the private sector, and concerted efforts to project where technology will be 10-15 years from now. These challenges are daunting and will require unwavering attention moving forward.

In FY 2014, DOC made progress toward making more of its data available to its customers.

Accomplishments include:

Census began testing a new model for organizing data assets called the Commerce Interoperability Framework. This model, which promises to make Commerce data easier to access and manipulate, has been jointly developed with NIST and dovetails with both the DOC FY 2014-18 Strategic Plan and OMB’s Open Data Policy Memorandum (M-13-13).
NIST and NTIS continued to work with the private sector to explore new uses for NIST official time (e.g. http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/grp40/new-time-stamp-service.cfm).
NOAA worked closely with businesses and entrepreneurs to intelligently position NOAA's vast data holdings in the cloud, to be co-located with easy and affordable access to computing, storage, and advanced analytical capabilities. Market research to gain this knowledge occurred through a series of interactions with industry throughout the year, including an initial Big Data Request for Information (RFI), which received responses from 70 companies, a Second Request for Information and Industry Day, with 200 unique organizations in attendance, and an Open Data 500 Roundtable Report.
To ensure the right expertise and leadership to drive its data transformation, DOC began its search for a Chief Data Officer, has hired a Deputy Chief Data Officer, and announced the establishment of the Commerce Data Advisory Council.

Next Steps in FY 2015:

FY2015Q1 – Complete draft of Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) in order to provide a means to further develop and pilot the NOAA Big Data Partnership model.
FY2015Q2 – Appoint members to Commerce Data Advisory Council.
FY2015Q2 – Sign CRADA with at least one partner in order to begin pilot of NOAA Big Data Partnership model.
FY2015Q2 – Convene first meeting of Commerce Data Advisory Council in order to begin soliciting expert recommendations as to how to make Commerce data more interoperable and easier to access, combine, and manipulate.
FY2015Q2 – Consider standing up two working groups in order to capitalize on expertise and shared experiences and to develop best practices within Commerce: (1) an application programming interface (API) working group; and (2) a mapping tools working group.
FY2015Q3 – Initiate first test pilot of the NOAA Big Data Partnership model with at least one dataset.
FY2015Q4 – Expand NOAA Big Data Partnership pilot to include multiple datasets.

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Strategic Goals

Strategic Goal:

Improve government, business, and community decisions and knowledge by transforming Department data capabilities and supporting a data-enabled economy.

Statement:

Improve government, business, and community decisions and knowledge by transforming Department data capabilities and supporting a data-enabled economy.

Strategic Objectives

Transform the Department’s data capacity to enhance the value, accessibility and usability of Commerce data for government, business and the public. (ESA, NOAA, NIST, NTIS)

Statement:

Transform the Department’s data capacity to enhance the value, accessibility and usability of Commerce data for government, business and the public. (ESA, NOAA, NIST, NTIS)

Description:

In sum, Commerce will lead efforts to make sure government data is accessible in ways to make our businesses more competitive, our governments smarter, and our citizens more informed.

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Improve data based services, decision-making and data sharing within the Department and with other parts of the Federal Government. (ESA, BEA, Census, BIS, ITA, MBDA)

Statement:

Improve data based services, decision-making and data sharing within the Department and with other parts of the Federal Government. (ESA, BEA, Census, BIS, ITA, MBDA)

Description:

The federal government collects vast amounts of data every day to support, protect, and defend the American public. Data can and should be used to drive program excellence and sound decision-making within the federal government. Data can be used more widely to help measure the efficacy of a wide variety of government assistance programs, allowing policy makers to make better and wiser choices on how best to spend limited resources. In other cases, data can be better shared or combined between agencies to make government programs more informed and more efficient.

We realize that to be leaders in the data revolution, we must look to our own ways of doing business and push them forward – hard. We cannot lead without reforming ourselves. In short, we must practice what we preach.

This strategic objective includes re-evaluating the relative usefulness of the data Commerce collects and whether that data is being used to support evidenced-based program management decisions within the government. For example, Commerce intends to use its existing data, along with data obtained from other Federal agencies, to help design the 2020 Census and potentially save billions of dollars. Making more and better use of data will require the ability to combine different data from different agencies to create new, more useful data products, and sharing data across agencies.

Our customers demand efficiency. Businesses, governments, and the public at large will benefit from the enhanced value of our data products and services and from the resultant savings. Businesses and the public will see reduced demands for information, lessening their concerns about survey response burdens, confidentiality of data, and privacy.

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Collaborate with the business community to provide more timely, accurate, and relevant data products and services for all our customers (ESA, NOAA)

Statement:

Collaborate with the business community to provide more timely, accurate, and relevant data products and services for customers (ESA, NOAA)

Description:

The demands for information change over time, reflecting the ever-changing nature of households, the economy, and our environment. For instance, our economy has gone through tectonic shifts over the past several decades, moving towards a more service-based, internationally-connected, and digitally-enabled economy. However, our data on these new, emerging portions of the economy have not kept pace. Likewise, we are not meeting our customers’ demands for more detailed data products in smaller geographic areas, such as information on regional and local economies or their changing environments. In many cases, the government has a responsibility to transform the data it collects into the most accessible and useable information possible to meet the needs of the public it serves. In other cases, the government is not best positioned to fully satisfy these needs. Consequently, many businesses have emerged to add value to available government data, transforming it in ways that help meet the vast and diverse public needs. We want to encourage this trend.

By partnering with the business community and the private sector at large, we will generate new data products helping grow current businesses and catalyze the development of new businesses. Through outreach to the business community and users, we will measure customer demand and determine what new data products to produce. Generating these new products will be done in one of three ways, depending on the nature of what is needed: (1) using in-house, traditional means and methods to produce new data products; (2) partnering with the private sector to couple its data with government data; or (3) providing government data in ways that are more useful to businesses and others so they can more easily combine it with their own private data resources.

Our business customers will be the first beneficiaries of this process. But the 90,000 governmental entities and nearly 320 million Americans that we serve will benefit from the new data products and services that are fueled by our efforts.

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