This morning was the first of two breakfasts that AFCEA Bethesda is hosting relating to the importance of data within the Federal Government with panelists talking about how to maximize the use of the large amounts of Government generated data.
The panel was moderated by long-time industry veteran, Wyatt Kash, who currently is the Vice President of Content Strategy, Scoop Media, FedScoop.
Panelists included:
- Michael Kennedy, Executive of Architecture and Interoperability, Office of the Program Manager, Information Sharing Environment, Office of the Director of National Intelligence
- David McClure, Jr. Data Asset Portfolio Analyst, Office of the Chief Information Officer, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Department of Commerce
- Michael Simcock, Director of Enterprise Data Management and Chief Data Architect, Department of Homeland Security
I come away from these kinds of data-focused panels with mixed feelings. The panelists are almost inevitably knowledgeable, articulate and passionate. They are clearly making some amounts of progress, slowing pulling together disparate programs, creating data standards that have begun increasingly to cross organizational barriers. I was pleased to note how often NIEM (National Information Exchange Model) was mentioned by all of the panelists. NIEM remains, IMO, the most mature and robust of the cross-organizational data sharing models and includes interfaces to state and local governments as well as international relationships.
At the same time, when one of the participants was asked if they had any authority to impose any of the solutions he was working on, made it clear the answer was no by avoiding answering that particular question at all. Further while accepting there have been a number of OMB created data initiatives such as data.gov and the multiple datapalooza’s (though I have yet to figure out what a datapalooza is), I remain convinced that one of the top 2 or 3 priorities that OMB should be focused on is data standardization building on NIEM as a foundation.
Regardless I would recommend that anyone interested in the topic should attend the next AFCEA Bethesda breakfast December 11th also focusing on the subject of data.