Government Executive
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We may be entering a Golden Age of data sharing.
Senior Fellow, IBM Center for the Business of Government
There were quiet celebrations a year ago as the long-awaited Federal Data Strategy and a 2020 action plan came to fruition. It involved hundreds of dedicated people across the government and the action plan covered 20 specific elements. But the federal data strategy is just a foundation for a potentially broader vision. A new report on the critical need for intergovernmental data sharing by Harvard’s Jane Wiseman says we need to extend it to become a national data strategy that embraces states and local governments as well.
By Stephanie Kanowitz
Dec 17, 2020
Intergovernmental data sharing could enable “an entirely new way of serving the public [that] could leverage both the power of data sharing on the back end, and the front-end capability to make transactions easier on the public with digital services,” but it’s not widespread enough, a new report found.
The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted both the value that data sharing among government agencies can bring – more efficient emergency response, creation of seamless user experiences and better service delivery and allocation of resources and the just how little of that sharing organizations actually do, according to “Silo Busting: The Challenges and Success Factors for Sharing Intergovernmental Data,” a Dec. 16 report from the IBM Center for the Business of Government.
Why It’s Time to Get Serious About Intergovernmental Data Sharing The continuing problems with COVID-19 data illustrate why we need to do a better job. Initiatives by some states and local governments are showing how to make that happen and derive greater value. John M. Kamensky, IBM Center for the Business of Government | December 16, 2020 | Opinion
New York Times op-ed, performance-data pioneer Beth Blauer and epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo labeled the state of the nation s COVID-19 data as a mess. Eight months into the pandemic, they wrote, there is still no federal standard to ensure testing results are being uniformly reported. Efforts like Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center try to standardize where possible, but overall the national numbers are inconsistent. This hinders policymakers ability to smartly allocate resources, such as vaccines, to where they will do the most good.