Purpose

Distinguished Federal Data Innovator Award

Agency Reporting Modernizations Team, Federal Energy Regulation Commission:

The FERC Agency Reporting Modernization Team led an initiative at FERC to modernize the reporting capability of the agency by moving away from its legacy Crystal Reports platform to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform and Power BI. FERC Agency Reporting (FAR) program provides staff with unprecedented access to data from 10 internal data assets by establishing interactive dashboards and supporting self-service analytics. FAR promotes broader use of FERC’s internal data by program office staff, including business analysts and data scientists, and improves access to capabilities that best align with their needs.

Rachel Wang and Jen Storm-Jenkins, Department of State:

Rachel Wang leads data platform services in the Office of Management Strategy & Solutions' Center for Analytics (M/SS/CfA) and falls under the Department CDO. Jen Storm-Jenkins is CfA's Technology Director and falls under the Department's CIO in the Bureau for Information Resource Management (IRM). Rachel and Jen co-lead a CIO-CDO hybrid team and led the Department's transformation in Data and Technology Platform Services. Recognizing the increased demand for data ingestion, storage, science, and visualization technology services, Rachel and Jen led the effort to create a common architecture solution. The resultant platform called Data.State democratizes access to technology, data, and analytics and enables data-informed decision-making organizational units at State headquarters and Embassies, Missions, and Consulates across the globe.

Excellence in Data Governance

Stephen Lewis, Department of Transportation:

As the federal lead for the National Address Database initiative (NAD) at the Department of Transportation (DOT), Mr. Lewis has embraced a distributed data governance model. The initiative is a true partnership effort, where local and tribal governments are recognized as the authoritative source for the address points that comprise the NAD. In most cases, the local and tribal data is rolled up to the state government level and then submitted to the NAD by state partners. To date, the NAD includes 38 state partners (including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico), 30 of which have submitted data. In states with restricted data or no address programs, the NAD has 28 county and 2 tribal partners. Mr. Lewis works with each partner to establish update frequencies based on their processes and publishes a new release of the NAD every 3 months. The latest release contained 65.3 million records.

Chris Haffer, Mark Leach, Ada Harris, and Kevin Malloy, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission:

This nomination recognizes members of EEOC's District Demographic Dashboard [D3] Team for designing, developing, and deploying an interactive visualization dashboard for State, Local, and Tribal Affairs and District Field enforcement staff. The team also provided support and training with a User Guide, demonstrations, and Q&A sessions with each stakeholder group. To the EEOC's knowledge, the launch of this dashboard marks the first time these stakeholder groups have been provided with self-service data and analytical tools, creating efficiencies in their work and Agency outreach efforts. The dashboard has broken down traditional institutional boundaries by establishing new partnerships between stakeholders. In addition, the innovative dashboard provides agency enforcement staff with new, additional analytical tools to combat systemic discrimination.

Team of the Year

Data Governance Division, Data Management Branch, Federal Energy Regulation Commission:

The Data Governance Division's Data Management Branch (DMB) led the implementation and deployment of FERC's "Athena" Platform – an innovative data science platform hosted on Microsoft's Azure cloud services - in partnership with divisions across FERC's CIO Organization. The scope of this program is to deploy, enhance, and maintain a cloud-hosted, user friendly, data science platform which provides on-demand, self-service capabilities and tools for data analysts to identify, curate, process, analyze, visualize and share results and outputs from FERC datasets.

Air Force Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Office, Department of the Air Force:

The Department of the Air Force's (DAF)  Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) successfully demonstrated the ability to service the entire DAF enterprise from the headquarters level. Over the last fiscal year, the team developed robust policies that operationalize data down to the lowest level of the DAF. With a budget of less than $80M, the number of operational users the CDO enabled was approximately 20K (total cost per user $4,000) across two data platforms with the DAF and also Joint partners in OSD Advana and the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. Due to the team's successes, the Under Secretary of the Air Force charged the office with a Data Investment Review to ensure the DAF remains operationally relevant. The team increased its total business capture in the DAF program by over 600%. Furthermore, the team's proven capabilities led the DAF personnel management community, AF/A1, to partner with their data platforms in order to modernize their personnel management data systems; the total value of the 33 month sprint between the AF/A1 and CDO is $1.6M.

Data Champion of the Year

Kimberly Lewis and Yolanda Cooper, Federal Energy Regulation Commission:

In close partnership, FERC's Data Governance Division and FERC's Acquisition Services Division successfully established and awarded FERC's first Data Support Services multiple award Blanket Purchase Agreement to procure timely, high-quality, and cost-effective support for Data Support Services at FERC. The strategic acquisition planning, guidance, and leadership from FERC's Contracting Officers allowed for the seamless award of this crucial contracting vehicle. It ensured that FERC has the necessary resources to successfully expand the data program as it matures to meet the requirements of the agency, Evidence Act, Federal Data Strategy, and the public.

Brian McKeon, Department of State:

Since joining the Department of State in 2021, Deputy Secretary McKeon has been a tireless advocate of all things data. From signing the Department's first-ever Enterprise Data Strategy and kicking off the first two Data Strategy Campaigns, Deputy Secretary McKeon has continued to push the Department to modernize its processes and use data to inform and drive its decision-making. Every six months, he leads a group of principals across the Department in deliberations to choose the next set of Data Campaigns—a process that helps the Department surge data science and policy resources around the Department's—and the world's—most pressing issues. Additionally, he has worked alongside other data leaders and practitioners to support data policy updates in the Department. These efforts to improve data transparency, data management, and data analytics platforms have helped put the Department on the leading edge of the federal data landscape. Furthermore, Deputy Secretary McKeon's advocacy has helped Department stakeholders better harness data to solve problems around crisis management, diversity and inclusion, and cybersecurity.

Distinguished Achievement in Federal Data

Wildland Fire Fuels Team, Department of Interior:

The interagency Wildland Fire Fuels Data Management team utilized groundbreaking knowledge graph tools to facilitate efficient interagency data governance that promotes understanding and coordination between partners. The Fuels Knowledge Graph Project focused on glossaries and key reference data to support the coordination of hazardous fuel reduction activities. The flexibility of the knowledge graph allows all partners to define and describe their vocabularies and data, including business rules for collection and use and the relationships between data from multiple sources. The use of common reference data sets enables more consistency across partners. The team coordinated with the states of CA, UT, NV, and TX to ensure non-federal representation. They also identified source data from USGS, OMB, OPM, and Treasury to promote the value of authoritative data sources and linked open data principles. The knowledge graph is transforming data governance in a complex, interagency environment.

Chris Haffer, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission:

In November 2017, Chris Haffer was appointed the EEOC's first Chief Data Officer. His initial direction was to modernize the agency's data processing functions and build a 21st-century data and analytics organization while utilizing state-of-the-art data science tools and techniques, and efficiently leveraging data to reduce burden and costs while protecting individual and employer privacy and promoting program transparency. In FY2022, this transformation to a 21st-century data and analytics organization was solidified with the launch of state-of-the-art products and services, from the EEOC Data and Analytics Modernization Program portfolio. These products support data-driven decision-making by clients and customers inside and outside government, adopting industry best practices and hiring skilled data scientists.

Working Group and Committee Superior Contributors

Small Agency Committee: Kirsten Dalboe, Federal Energy Regulation Commission

Large Agency Committee: Tom Sasala, Department of Defense

Data Sharing Working Group: Arun Acharya, Consumer Product Safety Division

Data Inventory Working Group: Robbin Rappaport, Internal Revenue Service

Data Skills and Workforce Development Working Group: Erik Price, Office of the Director of National Intelligence; Layne Morrison, Department of Education; Robin Wagner, National Institute of Health

Federal Chief Data Officer Council Distinguished Achievement in Federal Data – Individuals or Teams who make truly exceptional contributions to Federal Data and the use of data in policy-making.

Federal Chief Data Officer Council Distinguished Federal Data Innovator Award – For the mavericks (individuals or teams) who develop creative and “outside the box” ideas, help design them, and see them through to execution, including interagency collaborations, creative uses of data, interactive analytics products, etc.

Federal Chief Data Officer Council Data Champion of the Year – For Federal employees, outside of the Agency Data office, who make significant contributions to expanding data activities for their programs or agencies.

Federal Chief Data Officer Council Excellence in Data Governance – Open to personnel or teams who champion policies, processes, or procedures to enhance data governance throughout the Federal government or between state, local, and tribal governments.

Federal Chief Data Officer Council Team of the Year – Highlights the achievements of Federal teams who made strides in leveraging data as a strategic asset in or across agencies. For consideration for this award, teams may be composed of personnel within the data community or consist of cross-functional personnel (privacy, evaluation, statistical personnel, etc.).

Federal Chief Data Officer Council Award Working Group Superior Contributor – For CDOC WG members with superior performance in the execution of WG goals. Selected by WG chair.

Award nominations must be submitted by a CDO Council member and should describe, in an unclassified manner, the challenge and outcomes of the project or team actions. Nominations will be scored based on accomplishment of any of the following:

• Creativity, innovative approach to a data challenge;
• Impact (ie: Saved time, money, resources; increased synergies, collaboration, etc.);
• Impact on Internal and/or External Customer Experience;
• Promotion of Data Culture

Each nomination will be scored on a scale of 1-5 in each for the aforementioned criteria. Nominations must score an average of 3 or higher for selection as a winner in any category.

Only Federal Employees and military personnel are eligible for this program. Each category will allocate up to two awards annually, one for a CFO-Act Agency recipient or team and one for a non-CFO Act Agency recipient or team. Contract staff are ineligible for consideration.

• CFO-Act Agencies: This category is open to Chief Data Officers and support staff from any of the 24 Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act agencies. The 24 CFO Act Agencies include:

  • Agency for International Development
  • Department of Agriculture
  • Department of Commerce
  • Department of Defense (including Military Departments)
  • Department of Education
  • Department of Energy
  • Department of Health and Human Services
  • Department of Homeland Security
  • Department of Housing and Urban Development
  • Department of the Interior
  • Department of Justice
  • Department of Labor
  • Department of State
  • Department of Transportation
  • Department of the Treasury
  • Department of Veterans Affairs
  • Environmental Protection Agency
  • General Services Administration
  • National Aeronautics and Space Administration
  • National Science Foundation
  • Nuclear Regulatory Commission
  • Office of Personnel Management
  • Small Business Administration
  • Social Security Administration

• Non-CFO-Act Agencies: Chief Data Officers and support staff from any Non-CFO Act Agency are eligible for consideration.

  The CDO Council definition of “Agency” comes from 44 USC 3502. Under the definitions in that section the term Agency means:(1)the term “agency” means any executive department, military department, Government corporation, Government controlled corporation, or other establishment in the executive branch of the Government (including the Executive Office of the President), or any independent regulatory agency, but does not include—

  • the Government Accountability Office;
  • Federal Election Commission;
  • the governments of the District of Columbia and of the territories and possessions of the United States, and their various subdivisions; or
  • Government-owned contractor-operated facilities, including laboratories engaged in national defense research and production activities

Annual/ Per Calendar Year (1 Jan - 31 Dec)