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Why You Should Already Have a Data Governance Strategy
Garbage in, garbage out. This motto has been true ever since punched cards and teletype terminals. Today?s sophisticated IT systems depend just as much on good quality data to bring value to their users, whether in accounting, production, or business intelligence. However, data doesn?t automatically format itself properly, any more than it proactively tells you where it?s hiding or how it should be used. No, data just is. If you want your business data to satisfy criteria of availability, usability, integrity, and security, you need a data governance strategy.
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Data Responsibility: New Social Good for Information Age
As climate change intensifies, catastrophic, record-setting natural disasters look increasingly like the ?new normal? ? from Hurricane Matthew killing at least 1,300 people in September to Typhoon Lionrock, the previous month, causing flooding that left 138 dead and more than 100,000 homeless in North Korea. What steps can we take to limit the destruction caused by natural disasters? One possible answer is using data to improve relief operations.
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Commerce, EU Building Economic Data Library
The Commerce Department and European Commission are opening an online library of economic data, and everyone gets a membership card. Justin Antonipillai, head of the Economic and Statistics Administration, said the hope is to release an ?alpha version? of the library by the beginning of November. The first iteration will include economic indicators like Gross domestic product (GDP), population, employment and disposable income.
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Making Open Data More Evidenced-Based
During the IODC 2016, the ?Action Track: Measurement and Increasing Impact? sought to review the need and role of research for (scaling) open data practice and policy. Many participants acknowledged and shared progress toward gathering evidence on developments, actors and conditions that impact open data. Yet, a consensus emerged that more systematic research is still needed. An ?evidence-based and user-centric open data? approach is necessary to drive adoption, implementation, and use. In particular, three substantive areas were identified that could benefit from interdisciplinary and comparative research.
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NTIS Announces Selection of 35 Joint Venture Partners
The U.S. Commerce Department?s National Technical Information Service (NTIS) announced today that it has selected 35 organizations through a merit-based process as eligible to be joint venture partners (JVPs). Once partner agreements have been signed, the organizations, which include small and large companies, nonprofits and research groups, will be eligible to compete to work with NTIS on groundbreaking data projects conducted for and funded by federal agencies.
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Machine Learning Tool Cleans Dirty Data
Big data is a big deal, but problems within the data can skew results and lead to problematic choices. To help keep data – and the decisions based on it – clean, researchers at Columbia University and the University of California at Berkeley have developed new software. ActiveClean analyzes prediction models to determine which mistakes (e.g., typos, outliers and missing values) to edit first, updating the models in the process, according to Columbia.
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New IRS Data Shows Impact of Obamacare
The IRS just released tax data for returns filed for 2014, the first year of the health exchanges and individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This year, the new indicators are much more closely related to people affected by the ACA from a healthcare point of view. One new indicator shows people receiving premium subsidies through healthcare exchanges, a fundamental component to the ACA. Another indicator shows people opting not to purchase health insurance, who instead pay a penalty as part of their taxes.
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New & Updated Data Sources
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Workforce Data Quality Campaign ? Data Policy Toolkit
WDQC’s new toolkit offers information about policies that states can enact to improve data infrastructure and promote data use. The toolkit provides descriptions of state data policies, brief case studies, and legislative templates.
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BTS ? National Transportation Statistics
The U.S. Department of Transportation?s Bureau of Transportation Statistics updated National Transportation Statistics ? a web-only reference guide to national-level transportation data. NTS, updated quarterly, includes a wide range of national transportation information. NTS consists of more than 260 tables of national data on the transportation system, safety, the economy and energy and the environment.
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Visualization of the Week
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Visualizing Interest in Migration to G7 Countries
Google Trends, which analyzes search term usage and frequency, has created a data visualization mapping international interest in migration to G7 countries?Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United State?from 2004 to 2016. The visualization uses geotagged searches for the phrase ?migration to [country name]? and maps the connections between that country and the top 10 countries where that search was the most common. Users can compare the trends for each G7 country as well as view how interest in migration to a particular country changes over time.
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Notable Data Publications
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GOVERNMENT
HIGHER EDUCATION
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Did you work on a great report that you want your colleagues to know about? Just email us and we?ll include it here.
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APDU maintains a list of open calls for comment on proposed federal data collections. We periodically alert APDU members to newly added calls for comment. Over the last several weeks, calls for comment on the following proposed data collections were published in the Federal Register (with due date):
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Department of Labor
- Census of Fatal Occupation Injuries (November 21, 2016)
National Center for Education Statistics
- Fast Response Survey System 108: Career and Technical Education Programs in Public School Districts (November 21, 2016)
- NCER-NPSAS Grants ? Connecting Students 2017: Testing the Effectiveness of FAFSA Interventions on College Outcomes (December 19, 2016)
- NCER-NPSAS Grants ? Financial Aid Nudges: A National Experiment to Increase Retention of Financial Aid and College Persistence (December 19, 2016)
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