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| 3 Feb 2025 | |
| Blogs |
As we enter 2025, America stands at the cusp of a data transformation that could reshape how the government serves its citizens. Through improved data sharing and advanced analytics, we have unprecedented opportunities to enhance program effectiveness, drive business innovation, and deliver better outcomes for the American people. While challenges remain – including up to $500 billion in annual improper payments – we now have the technology and frameworks to address these issues while unlocking trillions in positive economic impact. The federal government already spends trillions responsibly, achieving important outcomes through priorities negotiated between Congress and the White House to support quality of life, healthy families, and business innovation.
The convergence of technological advancement, fiscal pressures, and growing demand for evidence-informed decision-making strengthens these opportunities to enhance America's data infrastructure. Building on the bipartisan foundation established by the OPEN Government Data Act and the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, we can accelerate the move from strategy to action, realizing the benefits of improved data capabilities in our society – including better positioning as a trusted source and provider of valid, reliable data and information.
The Federal Data Strategy, established during the first term of President Donald Trump, provides a blueprint for coordinated data sharing across government. This strategy, developed through extensive stakeholder feedback from agency staff, industry, academia, and nonprofits – including the Data Foundation and our Data Coalition members – created a 10-year roadmap with clear principles, practices, and actions. Recent successes demonstrate the potential impact – Treasury's "Do Not Pay" pilot program has already prevented millions in improper payments by accessing the Social Security Administration's Death Master File. While outdated laws create some unnecessary barriers to data sharing and verification, we have clear paths to address these challenges.
Importantly - perhaps critically in the discussion about data use – laws like the Privacy Act, the Paperwork Reduction Act, the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act, the Computer Matching Act, and many others provide important protections to the American people and businesses to ensure that government is a responsible, legal, and ethical steward of the information it collects. Ensuring privacy protections are robust while effective, responsible access is enabled for authorized users and uses will remain one of the important challenges facing public sector institutions in the coming year, and an important area for ongoing oversight between branches of government and third-party organizations, highlighting the importance of a central principle – the uses of government data should be transparent to the American people in order to effectively manage risks, align with societal values, and enable effective oversight.
1. Program Integrity and Improper Payment Prevention
Advanced analytics and improved data sharing offer powerful new capabilities for preventing improper payments before they occur. Digitization and cloud-based solutions enable predictive analytics that can identify potential issues before payments are made, while automation of paper-based processes like invoicing creates new opportunities for real-time verification and efficiency. Agencies can implement modern systems to verify basic information before sending payments – from checking if someone is deceased to verifying income or detecting duplicate payments across programs. Treasury's "Do Not Pay" system demonstrates this potential, and by thoughtfully addressing current data sharing restrictions while maintaining privacy protections, we can prevent billions in improper payments.
2. Data Verification and Trust Frameworks
The data ecosystem faces a growing verification crisis as agencies struggle to validate basic information before making payments or program decisions. New community-driven approaches to verifying and assessing data quality are emerging across critical domains including workforce, health, and climate data. This includes adapting existing frameworks for modern verification needs and developing transparent validation procedures that can scale across agencies. Success requires both technical solutions and meaningful engagement with affected communities to ensure verification processes are trustworthy and effective. The Data Foundation's emerging work on democratizing trust through community-driven verification frameworks demonstrates promising approaches for addressing these challenges. Recent Department of Commerce initiatives in late-2024 supporting AI readiness provide models for rapid scaling of data verification capabilities. Recognition programs that highlight excellence in dataset quality and accessibility can accelerate adoption of best practices.
3. State-Federal Data Partnership Transformation
States are crucial partners in achieving the Federal Data Strategy's vision of data as a strategic asset. States manage vital information from driver's licenses to death records that can help prevent identity theft and improper payments in federal programs. Successful models like the Regional Data Collaboratives show how cross-state cooperation enhances program outcomes, particularly in workforce development and education. States like Virginia, Indiana, and Arkansas have demonstrated effective approaches to integrating health, education, and workforce data that can be scaled nationally through intentional partnership. The American Workforce Advisory Board demonstrates how effective state-federal collaboration working with the private sector can drive meaningful outcomes while respecting jurisdictional authorities.
4. Modernized Data Sharing Authorities
Laws written before modern data systems and security measures actively prevent agencies from sharing critical information. The Privacy Act, Computer Matching Act, and Paperwork Reduction Act need reform to enable appropriate data sharing while maintaining robust privacy protections. Without legislative updates to these decades-old restrictions, even the best data strategy faces unnecessary implementation barriers. These reforms are essential across domains from financial services to healthcare. Importantly, modernization efforts can actually enhance compliance with laws like the Paperwork Reduction Act by creating more efficient, automated processes for data collection and sharing.
5. Privacy-Preserving Technology Advancement
Success requires accelerated research and adoption of privacy-preserving technologies that enable data sharing while protecting sensitive information. Modern approaches like privacy-preserving record linkage, synthetic data generation, and secure multi-party computation allow agencies to connect datasets without exposing sensitive details. The National AI Research Resource provides a model for scaling these capabilities while encouraging innovation.
6. Federal Data Strategy Implementation
The strategy's renewal demands focused leadership to transform its promise into reality. Immediate priorities include issuing overdue data governance guidance to federal agencies and implementing key features of the OPEN Government Data Act, including guidance issued in January 2025 that takes substantial steps in achieving this goal if implemented by federal agencies with fidelity. Enhanced coordination mechanisms must facilitate cross-agency collaboration, while expanded stakeholder engagement ensures solutions meet real-world needs.
7. Economic Innovation Through Public Data
When government data is accessible and usable, American businesses innovate. Weather data powers a multi-billion dollar forecasting industry, while GPS spawned countless navigation and logistics companies. Financial technology firms use standardized data to create market-protecting tools, and new data resources help insurance providers re-estimate flood risks. These successes demonstrate the economic potential of government data.
8. Workforce Development and Opportunity Creation
Better data integration between education providers, employers, and workforce agencies can match people to opportunities more effectively. State initiatives like the Regional Data Collaboratives show how enhanced data sharing improves outcome analysis. These models can be scaled nationally through coordinated state-federal partnerships.
9. Sustainable Data Infrastructure
Quality data systems pay for themselves by improving services, reducing waste, and minimizing fraud. Sustained resources for data infrastructure cannot be an afterthought. This includes investing in both technical systems and the leadership structures needed to ensure success. The return on investment is clear through preventing improper payments and enhanced program effectiveness. Cloud-based infrastructure offers particular advantages over on-premises servers for data analysis and sharing, while enabling better transparency around data lineage, metadata, and usage patterns.
10. International Competitiveness
America cannot afford inaction while global competitors advance. U.S. leadership in data governance and standards promotes innovation, while protecting national interests. This includes frameworks for international data sharing, privacy-preserving standards, and approaches that maintain American competitiveness.
Success in implementing these changes requires a coordinated approach across technical infrastructure, policy modernization, and workforce development. Technically, we need robust systems that prioritize verification capabilities and enable real-time validation of critical information. This includes standardization frameworks that ensure compatibility across systems, privacy-preserving technologies that protect sensitive information, and interoperability solutions that facilitate effective, efficient, ethical, and secure data sharing.
The policy landscape must evolve alongside these technical advances. Updated data sharing authorities need to balance access with protection, while modernized privacy regulations should reflect current technological capabilities. Equally important is building the workforce capacity to leverage these new capabilities – from technical implementation skills to analytical expertise. The Data Foundation and our Data Coalition members remain committed to supporting these efforts through research, advocacy, and practical implementation efforts.
The convergence of these trends creates significant opportunities to advance evidence-informed capabilities alongside governance while driving innovation and efficiency. With sustained commitment to modernizing our technical and legal frameworks, strengthening cross-sector partnerships, and demonstrating measurable impact, we can build momentum for continued progress. The foundations are in place. The technology exists. The return on investment is clear. It's time to move from strategy to pragmatic action and build the data infrastructure America needs to own its future.
The Data Foundation is a Washington, DC-based, non-profit, non-partisan organization. It is a trusted authority on the use of open, accessible data to fuel a more efficient, effective, and accountable government; spark innovation; and provide insights to the country’s most pressing challenges. It conducts research, facilitates collaborative thought leadership, and promotes advocacy programs that advance practical policies for the creation and use of accessible, trustworthy data and evidence. The Data Foundation is recognized by Candid Guidestar with the Platinum Seal of Transparency and by Charity Navigatory as a 4-Star non-profit. To learn more, visit www.datafoundation.org. (LEI: 254900I43CTC59RFW495)
