May 4, 2017

For immediate release

Contact: Jessica Yabsley at Jessica.yabsley@datafoundation.org or 202-415-4025

New DATA Act report lays out a long-term vision for federal government spending transparency and management.

Washington, D.C. – Today, the Data Foundation and Deloitte released a new report, DATA Act 2022: Changing Technology, Changing Culture. The report describes how the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act) of 2014 (PL No. 113-101), the nation’s first open data law, is set to evolve beyond the law’s statutory implementation deadline of November 2021. The report lays out a comprehensive long-term vision for the DATA Act.

In May 2017, the DATA Act will produce the first unified open data set that covers all federal spending: the most valuable open data set in the world. This open data set will not only benefit the agencies themselves but also recipients of federal funds, watchdogs like Congress and agency inspectors general, journalists, and the American public. Once fully implemented, the DATA Act will change the whole federal information ecosystem from chains of disconnected documents into streams of freely flowing, interoperable data.

Report highlights:

The report lays out seven technical and cultural challenges and solutions for the DATA Act (see Table 1) such as ensuring long-term governance of the law's schema and educating agencies to use DATA Act data sets.
The report includes five case studies that illustrate how the DATA Act can allow federal agencies to gain new enterprise-wide visibility into their accounts, obligations, and awards along with other benefits such as enabling inspectors general to deploy anti-fraud analytics more cheaply.
Interviewees had a consistent message: While expectations should be high for May 2017, not everything will be perfect right away.

“The DATA Act presents the federal government with a unique opportunity to transform the way government collects and uses spending information,” said Hudson Hollister, Interim President of the Data Foundation. “By 2022, the DATA Act’s implementation process will have matured. Spending information will be automated and interoperable, empowering agencies to fully utilize analytics tools, program evaluation, budgeting and management decisions. Our report highlights that complacency will affect complete DATA Act implementation. But with strong leadership, the law will solidify trust between government and society.”

“The technology available to us today coupled with open data can make our government spending more accurate and transparent,” said Dave Mader, specialist executive, Deloitte Consulting LLP and chief strategy officer, civilian sector. “To do that, we need to move from a compliance-based view to an insights-based view of the DATA Act. The power of this legislation is so much more than just compliance. We need to get people – inside and outside of government – excited by what the DATA Act could be once fully implemented, not just what it is today.”

Report methodology:

Over 20 DATA Act stakeholders were interviewed, from OMB and Treasury implementers, agency officials to contractors helping agencies with compliance, congressional watchdogs, and outside observers. The five case studies focus on: Data USA, the Ohio State Treasurer’s OhioCheckBook.com, the Small Business Administration, the USPS Inspector General, and the financial crises in Puerto Rico and Detroit.

Read the full report here.

About the Data Foundation:

The Data Foundation is the nation’s first industry-focused open data research organization. Through research, education, and programming, the Foundation illuminates the benefits of transforming government information into standardized, open data. For more information, visit datafoundation.org.

About Deloitte:

Deloitte provides industry-leading audit, consulting, tax and advisory services to many of the world’s most admired brands, including 80 percent of the Fortune 500 and more than 6,000 private and middle market companies. Our people work across more than 20 industry sectors to deliver measurable and lasting results that help reinforce public trust in our capital markets, inspire clients to make their most challenging business decisions with confidence, and help lead the way toward a stronger economy and a healthy society.

Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee (“DTTL”), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as “Deloitte Global”) does not provide services to clients. In the United States, Deloitte refers to one or more of the US member firms of DTTL, their related entities that operate using the “Deloitte” name in the United States and their respective affiliates. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting. Please see www.deloitte.com/about to learn more about our global network of member firms.

Full list of interviewees:

• Gary Bass, Executive Director, The Bauman Foundation

• Andrew Brown, Data Scientist, Govini

• Autumn Carter, Government Affairs, OpenGov Inc.

• Congressional Oversight Staff

• Kaitlin Devine, Department of the Treasury

• Dr. Paul Eder, Lead Consultant, Center for Organizational Excellence

• Amy Edwards, Department of the Treasury

• Bill Eggers, Executive Director, Deloitte Center for Government Insights

• Shane Engel, Senior Manager, Deloitte

• Eric Gillespie, CEO, Govini

• Steve Goodrich, President and CEO, Center for Organizational Excellence

• Rob Gramss, Principal, Federal Advisory, Deloitte & Touche LLP

• Dick Gregg, Managing Director, H.J. Steininger PLLC

• Timothy Gribben, Chief Financial Office, Small Business Administration

• Christina Ho, Department of the Treasury

• Debbie Kramer, Department of Health and Human Services

• Karen Lee, Office of Management and Budget

• Derick Masengale, Managing Director, Deloitte Consulting

• Marco Mendoza, visual designer, Govini

• Seth Metcalf, Deputy Treasurer, Ohio

• Timothy Miller, Public Safety Specialist, Socrata

• Michael Peckham, Department of Health and Human Services

• Christian Peratsakis, Consulting Services Manager, Socrata

• Tim Richardson, CTO, Govini

• David Schmidtknecht, Principal, CBEYONData

• Chuck Simpson, Principal Consultant, Center for Organizational Excellence

• Scott Straub, Director of Federal Markets, Lexis Nexis Risk Solutions

• Kelly Tshibaka, Chief Data Officer, USPS Office of the Inspector General

• Peter Viechnicki, Strategic Analytics Manager, Data Scientist, Deloitte

• Christopher Zeleznick, Department of Health and Human Services

###