2021 Action Plan

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Community of Practice and Shared Solution Actions

Community of Practice Actions are taken by a specific agency or group of agencies related to a common topic, usually through an established interagency council or other existing coordinating mechanism. Shared Solution Actions are government-wide data services and represent discrete pilot projects or efforts led by a single agency or existing council for the benefit of all agencies. For 2021, Community of Practice and Shared Solution Actions focus on activities that further cross-agency, executive-level, enterprise data maturity and common approaches to data. Each of the following Actions is either an established priority or an already funded project and is expected to deliver according to previously established milestones.

Action 7: Artificial Intelligence & Automation

Executive Order 13859, Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence,¹ calls on agencies to increase public access to government data and models where appropriate. Executive Order 13960, Promoting the Use of Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in the Federal Government,² establishes principles for agency use of AI and requires action by the CIO Council and agencies in 2021. To initiate this process, the following milestones adopted for the 2021 Action Plan focus on developing and disseminating a robust set of AI use cases across the government and the public, and developing recommendations to significantly increase AI-specific government expertise. Additionally, recognizing the growing need to understand the risks associated with automated decision-support systems, the CIO Council will deliver in 2021 an open-source Algorithmic Assessment Tool that will help guide federal agencies through process improvement along with data and system considerations.

Action 8: Government-Wide Dashboards and Infrastructure

Agencies have made significant progress in leveraging data as a strategic asset to enable effective decision-making using data that is timely, reliable, and actionable. Several agencies have created integrated approaches to data analytics and decision-support development, infrastructure, and tools, yet there is no strategy for an approach that would provide decision support on common or urgent issues across multiple federal agencies. The COVID-19 national emergency demonstrated the need to share decision-support tools widely across agencies with urgent, emerging needs to ensure leadership have the data for critical decisions. The CDO Council’s COVID-19 Data Coordination Working Group identified opportunities to improve data access and data infrastructure, and to enhance data modelling and dashboard sharing across federal agencies. In 2021, the CDO Council will analyze the key areas and use cases for which shared, interagency decision-support would provide the most value; issue a set of recommendations for a government-wide infrastructure solution and associated funding mechanisms; and create a proof-of-concept demonstration.

Action 9: Data-Skills Workforce Development

In support of Action 4, agencies need documented examples of successful data-skills training efforts already in use across the federal government. GSA, in collaboration with an interagency working group, developed a Curated Data Skills Catalog in 2020. Responsibility for the Catalog was transferred to the CDO Council. In 2021, the CDO Council will develop a data-skills workforce development playbook that will serve as a roadmap for designing, implementing, and administering a data-skills training program that includes data ethics as a theme.

Action 10: Interagency Wildland Fire Fuels Data Management

In 2020, devastating wildland fires took lives and destroyed property across the United States. Improved land management can reduce the risk of wildland fire by decreasing available fuel. Effective land management requires fusing, interpreting, and managing a wealth of diverse data produced by federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments.

The Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture, in partnership with other state and federal land management agencies, will demonstrate best practices for governing and combining disparate data. Such practices include linking data to the original source, and then publishing the data as a knowledge graph that integrates feedback from subject matter experts. Adding value to the data using such techniques may enable new solutions. Interagency coordination in fuels data management will demonstrate the responsible use of such data to help reduce wildfire risk, increase transparency, and benefit future uses with AI. Similarly, the experience with data-sharing, transfer, and collaboration will have effects beyond this single project or even scientific domain. The processes may be transferable across the federal landscape.

Action 11: Geospatial Data Practices

The 2020 Action Plan articulated a series of milestones to better integrate geospatial data practices into the federal data enterprise. The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) developed a National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Strategic Plan that sets overarching goals to ensure that geospatial data supports agency missions, economic growth, and technological innovation. The FGDC continues to operate GeoPlatform to make National Geospatial Data Assets (NGDA)³ publicly available and discoverable.

The FGDC is focusing on improving coordination and collaboration across interagency councils. In particular, the FGDC will establish and identify CDO Council liaisons to participate in and champion discussions with the broader federal data community. These efforts will help advance the integrated use of the National Geospatial Data Asset portfolio and other geospatial data.

The FGDC will also complete an analysis to identify high-value geospatial investment areas for the Geospatial Data Act (GDA) and the NSDI. The analysis will seek to capture federal agencies’ perspectives and concerns, considering applicable laws, policies, missions, and data and service requirements across federal agencies and with non-federal partners.

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