2: Delivery Channel
[Provide] a delivery channel to enable agencies to make their data more accessible, discoverable, comprehensible, and usable. Other Information:
Since most agencies have information dissemination as part of their mission, Data.gov is a key component for improved mission
delivery. It is a delivery channel to enable agencies to make their data more accessible, discoverable, comprehensible, and
usable. As such, agencies may choose to use Data.gov as their primary means of information dissemination to the public and
forego the need to maintain their current processes for publishing their data. Specifically, agencies can use Data.gov not
only to store their metadata via the Data.gov metadata storage shared service, but agencies can also forego management of
their own data storage infrastructure by leveraging what will become the data storage shared service described in Chapter
3. As additional data and tools are made available through Data.gov and as improvements are made to metadata and data quality,
and search, discovery, and access tools, it will become an important resource to user groups, leading in turn to greater the
visibility and use of data. By this logic, the benefit to participating agencies increases as additional agencies begin to
participate more actively. In this manner, agencies have a vested interested in not only their own active participation, but
the active participation of their peer agencies. From an individual agency perspective, one value proposition of Data.gov
is that it gives high visibility to data that the agency wants to share with the public. As illustrated by an example in Figure
4, Data.gov includes revolving panels of “featured tools and datasets” that provide even more visibility and showcase high‐quality
data and tools provided by the Federal government. These featured tools and datasets are rotated on a regular basis to keep
the content fresh and representative of the many topical areas within the purview of the Federal government. Data.gov assists
agencies with their information dissemination requirements. It also provides agencies with a new and important public feedback
mechanism. As Data.gov continues to evolve, agencies will be provided with new and more robust ways to obtain feedback directly
from the end users of their authoritative data. For instance, the public can provide specific narrative feedback on published
data and tools. Agencies that actively participate in Data.gov not only share their data more widely, but also increase the
public’s awareness of their works in key mission areas. Active participation in Data.gov increases overall visibility and
can engender a greater trust and appreciation for agency missions, their roles, and their overall performance in the service
of the country. Transparency of agency data provides the public with the ability ‐‐ either through government tools, third‐party
web applications, or other means ‐‐ to understand their government, its impact on their lives, and hold it accountable. This
transparency can also translate into the discovery and implementation of collaborative initiatives with other Federal organizations.
Measuring Success -- Data.gov will measure its success based upon primary and secondary metrics. The three primary metrics
are: (1) cross agency participation, (2) use of disseminated data, and (3) the usability of the data available through Data.gov.
All primary metrics will be recorded over time and displayed on the performance dashboard tool discussed in Chapter 3, Future
Conceptual Solution Architecture. The initial secondary performance metrics are many and are included in “Appendix A – Detailed
Metrics for Measuring Success”.
Stakeholder(s):
- Agency Administrators: Agency administrators, in support of enterprise transparency, should direct their program offices and CIO to jointly coordinate
and support Data.gov requirements.
- Data Stewards: Agencies are encouraged to vet Data.gov requirements through a Data Stewards’ Advisory Group or equivalent internal organization,
whose participants would represent each of the agency’s program areas. This will have the effect of empowering individuals
agency‐wide who are most familiar with potential datasets that could be made ready for public dissemination. * The data steward
has the responsibility for documenting the agency’s data using the Data.gov metadata template and the POC should help coordinate
the exposure of this metadata to Data.gov in one of the several ways detailed in this Concept of Operations document. * The
data steward is responsible for ensuring that the data is compliant with information quality guidelines and other applicable
information dissemination requirements, that the corresponding metadata are compliant with the Data.gov requirements and are
complete, and that the data are available online through the agency’s website.
- Agency Program Offices: Agency program offices are the source of the data that are posted to Data.gov. * Program offices are responsible for determining
which data and tools are suitable to be posted on Data.gov, being mindful of the significance of exposing data through Data.gov
in terms of the authoritative and high quality nature of data being included in a high profile Presidential Initiative. *
Program offices retain the right and responsibility for managing their own data and providing adequate technical documentation.
This role tends to be carried out by program offices within the context of their particular missions. The term ‘data steward’
is used to refer to the agency staff that is directly responsible for managing a particular dataset. -- Agency program offices
are responsible for ensuring that the data stewards for a particular data asset complete the required metadata for each dataset
or tool to be publicized via Data.gov. -- Agency program offices should facilitate Data.gov POCs and CIO efforts to understand
and catalog data assets, as indicated below. -- Agency program offices, in conjunction with Data.gov POCs and CIOs, are responsible
for ensuring that their data assets are consistent with their statutory responsibilities within the context of information
dissemination, including those related to information quality, security, accessibility, privacy, and confidentiality.
- Agency CIOs: Agency CIOs, in conjunction with program partners, are responsible for cataloging8 and understanding their data assets, establishing
authoritative sources, and ensuring the high quality of data. Agencies are encouraged to engage their enterprise architecture
programs to formally catalog their data assets, determine which sources are authoritative, and evaluate adherence to information
quality guidelines. Agencies are encouraged to leverage the Federal Data Reference Model which provides agencies with assistance
to: * Identify how information and data are created, maintained, accessed, and used; * Define agency data and describe relationships
among mission and program performance and information resources to improve the efficiency of mission performance. * Define
data and describe relationships among data elements used in the agency’s information systems and related information systems
of other agencies, state and local governments, and the private sector. -- Agency CIOs and program offices have the responsibility
of ensuring that authoritative data sources are made available in formats that are platform independent and machine readable.
Agency enterprise architecture programs should promote the publication of web services, linked open data, and general machine
readable formats such as XML. -- Agency CIOs have the responsibility for assigning an overall Data.gov “point of contact”
for their agency (POC). The agency’s Data.gov point of contact (POC) is responsible for ensuring that the requested documentation
accompanies all datasets posted to Data.gov.
- Agency POCs: * The POC is responsible for training data stewards as to the importance of the metadata template that accompanies a Data.gov
submission as well as how to complete this template. -- The POC is responsible for understanding Data.gov processes, Data.gov
metadata requirements, and compliance requirements for coordinating data submissions for the agency. The Data.gov POC role
is expected to evolve as each agency’s dissemination processes mature and the Data Management System improves (as discussed
in the next section). Initially, the role and responsibilities of these POCs are as follows: * POCs are responsible for coordinating
an internal (agency) process for working with the program offices to ensure the identification and evaluation of data for
inclusion in Data.gov. Such a process must include: a) screening for security, privacy, accessibility, confidentiality, and
other risks and sensitivities; b) adherence to the agency’s Information Quality Guidelines; c) appropriate certification and
accreditation (C&A); and d) signoff by the program office responsible for the data. * The POC is also responsible for facilitating
feedback to Data.gov from the data stewards regarding improvements to the metadata requirements, including recommendations
that generate taxonomies to facilitate interoperability.
- Senior Advisory Group: The Executive branch hosts many interagency efforts that focus on missions associated with data policy, information management,
and enhancing the dissemination of digital data. Representatives of many of these formal communities of interest have been
recruited to serve on a council of senior advisors to Data.gov, including: * The Chief Information Officers’ (CIO) Council,
which includes the CIOs from all Chief Financial Officer‐Act departments and agencies * The Interagency Council on Statistical
Policy (ICSP), which includes representation from 14 principal Federal statistical agencies * The Federal Geographic Data
Committee (FGDC), an interagency committee that promotes the coordinated development, use, sharing, and dissemination of geospatial
data on a national basis * The Commerce, Energy, NASA, and Defense Information Managers Group (CENDI), an interagency working
group of senior scientific and technical information (STI) managers from 13 Federal agencies * The Interagency Working Group
on Digital Data (IWGDD), coordinated by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) * The Networking and Information
Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program, the Nation's primary source of federally funded revolutionary breakthroughs
in advanced information technologies such as computing, networking, and software. Their input serves both to ensure alignment
across the Executive branch with respect to modernizing information dissemination and to motivate their colleagues in their
home agencies to become more active in making their data assets available to Data.gov. Specifics on the Advisory Group include:
* The Advisory Group is designed to be a vehicle for cross‐government fertilization with respect to information policy and
transparency opportunities raised by the Data.gov initiative as well as a mechanism for mobilizing support for and implementing
the transformational goals of Data.gov. Furthermore, the Senior Advisory Group helps the Data.gov team understand and establish
models, frameworks, and technology support for performance measurement and management around information quality, dissemination,
and transparency. * The Advisory Group is one of several vehicles that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) uses to obtain
advice on the direction of Data.gov. OMB also receives advice from the Project Management Office at GSA, the CIO‐appointed
agency POCs, representatives of related websites described in Section 4, as well as from technology and information policy
leaders outside the government, and Data.gov users. * The Advisory Group is wholly comprised of senior level Executive Branch
(government) employees. Participants are representatives of existing, formally chartered Executive Branch communities of interest
around information policy and transparency. Additional communities of interest may be nominated for potential representation
on the Council; OMB will determine the goodness of fit, and offer invitations as appropriate. * In addition to representing
the perspective of their Federal community of interest, Advisory Group participants will be asked to speak from the perspective
of agency data stewards. * The Advisory Group is not a decision making or voting body, and consensus will not be sought. *
The Advisory Group is co‐led by OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and OMB’s Office of E‐government and Information
Technology. The Advisory Group: * Encourages the development and implementation of a unified vision for achieving data interoperability
and other efforts to modernize Executive Branch data dissemination and sharing. * Provides OMB with a forum for working interactively
with senior program executives, agency data stewards, and others responsible for the generation and dissemination of data
accessible through Data.gov. * Provides feedback to OMB on the potential impact of Data.gov proposals on agency and interagency
data generation and dissemination programs.
- Subject Matter Expert Technical Working Groups: Data.gov will harness the interests and expertise of staff across the Government when it stands up technical working groups
designed to develop approaches to modernizing and streamlining data formats and structures to allow linking, tagging, and
crawling. For instance, the Data.gov team will draw on expertise from across the Government to provide advice regarding the
best approaches to publishing metadata that facilitate encoding meaning into datasets in such a way that they are directly
interpretable by computers and that strengthen the interoperability of Federal datasets.
- Federal Communities of Interest/Information Portals: Other interagency efforts, such as Science.gov and Fedstats.gov, are focused on serving distinct user communities and to make
information easier to find and more useful for those communities. These Federal communities of interest often disseminate
their data through information portals. Increasingly, these sites will have the opportunity to mimic the design patterns of
Data.gov including the metadata template, catalog capabilities, and end user search and feedback capabilities. Federal communities
of interest that offer these information portals to the public are encouraged to first standardize a metadata taxonomy or
syntax to be shared with Data.gov, and then communicate any changes to it as the community evolves the standard. These communities
of interest are encouraged to expose corresponding data either as downloadable data, query points, or tools. In this way,
the information portals provided by these Federal communities of interest will become more standardized in how their data
is maintained and shared, and these information portals will become networked to Data.gov to allow for maximum visibility,
discoverability, understanding and usefulness of the data.
- States, Localities, and Tribes: Although Data.gov does not catalog state, local, or tribal datasets, there is a shared benefit of cross‐promoting efforts
to catalog and make non‐Federal data assets more transparent. State, local, and tribal governments are encouraged to leverage
the thoughts, ideas, and patterns used by Data.gov to develop their own Data.gov style solutions. State, local, and tribal
governments are also encouraged to inform the Data.gov team of their own implementations so that Data.gov can link to those
specific sites. Furthermore, state, local, and tribal governments are encouraged to innovate new and interesting ways of cataloging,
presenting, searching, and visualizing their data. State, local, and tribal governments are also encouraged to find more interactive
and elegant ways of interacting directly with the public. As innovations are implemented, non‐Federal governments are encouraged
to share these breakthroughs with the Data.gov team for potential use on Data.gov.
- International Standardization Organizations: Key stakeholders in the development and continual improvement of Data.gov will include the relevant bodies that set international
standards related to Data.gov’s processes, including the World Wide Web Consortium, International Standardization Organization,
National Institute of Standards and Technology, or the actual standards themselves, such as Dublin Core. As Data.gov evolves,
it may be necessary to build upon or add to these standards, and even make recommendations to these organizations to update
their standards. Data.gov will look to the expert domain communities within the Federal government to work with these organizations
and recommend adjustments to Data.gov’s processes and metadata requirements.
Objective(s):
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