Data-Driven Decision-Making: An Emerging Priority Across the Public Sector

There is a growing recognition that embracing commercial data-driven best practices can transform governments into agile, efficient, and impactful organizations

The government is looking to adapt private sector best practices for leveraging data and analytics, and recent Federal Government-wide IT modernization efforts, including the new Cloud Smart strategy being developed by OMB, will increase the pressure on agency leaders to implement advanced analytics and big data solutions to improve mission outcomes, reduce operational costs, and increase enterprise agility.

Nearly all CFO Act agencies prioritize data / analytics related opportunities in their 2018-22 strategic plans. Our analysis of over 20 agency strategic plans identified three broad thematic opportunity areas:

• Foundational capability building, such as enhancing data collection and utilization (e.g., USDA’s Strategic Goal 1 and Objective 1.4) and improving data governance and data lifecycle management (e.g., Department of Education’s Strategic Objective 3.1)
• Technology investment to unlock insights, such as implementing data systems and business intelligence solutions (e.g., GSA’s Strategic Objectives 2.1 and 2.2 and Department of Transportation’s Safety goal and Strategic Objective 1)
• Better utilizing data to drive mission outcomes, such as improving service delivery (e.g., Department of Commerce’s Strategic Goal 5), streamlining processes (e.g., HHS’ Strategic Goal 5), improving financial management and reducing audit weaknesses (e.g., HUD’s Strategic Objective 2.3)

To help Federal leaders get the most from their data / analytics initiatives, we are engaging leading thinkers from the public sector in a dialogue to discuss key mission outcomes they are prioritizing for these efforts and the critical enablers of smarter data-driven decision making.

Our focus is on surfacing practical, actionable tactics and ideas that public sector leaders can quickly implement. In our view, driving operational excellence in the public sector doesn’t have to be hard!

We invite you participate in and shape this dialogue. Get in touch with us to discuss key data and analytics priorities for your organization, areas where you believe you have made significant progress and what helped you achieve those outcomes, and potential challenges that remain to be overcome. We will report our findings via a series of briefs, and a convene a meeting to foster a broader dialogue on this topic.

Interested in learning more Data Driven Decision Making?

Contact us at 202-296-0601 to learn more.