Feds get resourceful in implementing DATA Act

A Treasury Department official with responsibility for developing DATA Act compliance guidelines says the plan is to keep new data creation to a minimum – largely because there is no new money available to implement the measure.

“We are very conscious of the fact that we don’t have additional resources and what we’re trying to do is take a data-centric approach,” Renata Maziarz, senior policy analyst at the Bureau of Fiscal Service at Treasury, said at the Federal Big Data Summit in Washington, D.C., on June 20.

That “data-centric approach,” according to Maziarz, will require OMB and Treasury to look at the data that already exists and see what can be re-used.

“We spend a lot of time recording information and doing due diligence with data, but we don’t do a good job reusing that data," she said. "We want to encourage that.”

There’s “more to come” regarding details about the work the Office of Management and Budget and Treasury are doing, but Maziarz said that leveraging existing efforts and collaboration will be key in meeting the May 15, 2015, deadline to develop and publish standards compliant with the law, which requires the establishment of uniform federal standards for publishing government spending data.

Once those standards are established, agencies have two years to comply.