Treasury moves on data transparency (with or without DATA Act) [推广有奖]

. Treasury moves on data transparency (with or without DATA Act)

By Molly Bernhart Walker

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Even without the financial oversight responsibilities the Treasury Department would receive under the House-approved version of the DATA Act (H.R. 2061), the department intends to standardize the subset of agency financial reporting it already controls, said a Treasury Department official.
"We're being asked to take more of a leadership role in the data transparency space," said Christina Ho, the newly-appointed executive director for data transparency at the Fiscal Service. Ho spoke during a Dec. 5 event in Washington, D.C. hosted by the Data Transparency Coalition and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
"This is going to be a very different endeavor than a typical government project because of the varied stakeholders involved," she said.
In September, David Lebryk, commissioner of the financial management service made a bureau-wide announcement that data transparency would be a strategic goal for the coming year.
Marisa Schmader, director of the project support division at Treasury, told attendees data standardization remains something of an R&D effort right now. The Fiscal Service is beginning development of a prototype that takes the concept of intelligent data--or "data with context"--and data standards and applies it to agency financial data. She said the office is examining types of tags, what can be done with data once it's tagged and where in the process tags should be applied, among other questions.
The intelligent data prototype will likely leverage existing industry standards, said Ho. In the long-term, following industry's lead on financial data standards and applying them to agencies is the way to go, she said.
"It's not going to be a short journey," said Ho.
The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board has been tracking Recovery Act dollars (and now, Superstorm Sandy relief funds) and has developed unique methodologies to rapidly aggregate and analyze data for investigative information, said Ross Bezark, executive director of the Recovery Board.
Following the event Nancy DiPaolo, the board's chief of congressional and intergovernmental affairs, said some of the data fields that the Recovery Board tracks may be transferrable to other government entities.
Marcel Jemio, chief data architect at the Fiscal Service, said he hopes there are rules and mechanisms from the Recovery Board's work that they're able to use. What is realistically shareable will become more clear as the board and the Fiscal Service begin having more conversations, said Jemio following the event.
The Fiscal Service is trying to architect the intelligent data prototype for collaboration and brace for uncertainty, said Jemio.
"With our data, there are things we know, things we don't know and things we don't know that we don't know," he said.
"Being in the space of uncertainty, where you don't know exactly what's going to happen is where the growth occurs. Not everybody is comfortable with that--and I can't really say I am--but it's exciting," said Ho.
Ho acknowledged that there have been past attempts to consolidate federal financial systems and reporting.
"This effort need to be different, we can't simply mandate agencies and non-federal communities to work together," said Ho.
In a budget-constrained environment, unless agencies see the value they can gain from standardized, consumable financial data, the effort will fail, she said.
"It cannot just be another Treasury or OMB requirement," said Ho.
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