Contact: Gail Porter, 301-975-3392, gail.porter@nist.gov

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Commerce Department's (DOC) National Technical Information Service (NTIS) hosted a public forum today to examine federal data challenges, priorities, and lhtmleading practices from the private and public sectors.

“NTIS is uniquely positioned to help federal agencies leverage their data resources,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross in a keynote talk at the event. Working with federal and private sector joint venture partners, said Ross, DOC and NTIS can help “improve operational efficiency and serve the American public more effectively.”

Joint venture partners, who were competitively selected by NTIS in October 2016 to work with the federal government, will help to rapidly define and address federal data challenges. By leveraging expertise through this public-private partnership, NTIS will create unique platforms to access, analyze, and use data; combine and use data in new ways to enable innovative products and services; and deliver better data to businesses, communities, and citizens.

“Data is a renewable national resource, providing a 360 view of our nation’s people and economy,” said NTIS Director Avi Bender. “NTIS is fostering new operating models of how we deliver federal services” by using “data management as a key catalyst for innovation.”

The federal government collects an enormous amount of useful data about everything from weather and climate to statistics on the U.S. economy. However, many barriers exist for efficiently using, sharing, analyzing, and gaining insights from these national data resources, either alone or in combination with non-federal data.

Four federal speakers at the forum described how their agencies are optimizing the collection and analysis of data to drive their agency missions.

• Henry Francis of the Food and Drug Administration described a cloud-based system called RAPID that supports collaboration with other agencies to monitor emerging health threats.
• Caryl Brzymialkiewicz of the Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services discussed her team’s data-driven methods to fight fraud, waste, and abuse in programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
• Christopher Carrino of the U.S. Census Bureau and Jeff Chen of the Commerce Data Service discussed best practices for data standards, analytics, and data-driven strategic planning.

See slide deck of NTIS Federal Data Meeting April 4, 2017 here: NTIS Federal Data Meeting Slide Deck

About NTIS

NTIS provides innovative data services to federal agencies through joint venture partnerships with the private sector that advance federal data priorities, promote economic growth, and enable operational excellence. As a fee-supported agency, it receives no appropriations from Congress.