Purpose

Distinguished Achievement in Federal Data

James Barham, Department of Agriculture (CFO):

Launched in February 2023, the Rural Data Gateway is an online platform featuring over 20 data visualizations and charts that illustrate how investments through more than 70 USDA developmental programs have supported local and regional rural economies since 2012. It allows users to compare investments across different years, programs, and geographical areas, enhancing transparency and fostering trust between rural communities and USDA. The Gateway significantly expands public access to rural development data, informs discussions, improves program administration, and enhances outreach to rural and tribal communities.

Distinguished Federal Data Innovator

Sara Cermenaro, Social Security Administration (CFO):

The CDO team, led by Ms. Sara Cermenaro, is fostering a Data Stewardship culture across the Social Security Administration (SSA) by implementing a Data Governance framework. Key initiatives include developing a FY 2024-2027 enterprise data strategy focusing on people, process, and technology, launching a maturity assessment to set a baseline and prioritize resources, and creating a data governance platform to communicate practices and unite SSA. SSA’s commitment to transparent, collaborative, sustainable, and non-invasive principles aims to advance data management maturity and enhance service delivery and operational efficiency.

The Data Policy and Access Team, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (Non-CFO):

The Data Policy and Access Team within the Office of Enterprise Data and Analytics (OEDA) has significantly enhanced the accessibility and confidentiality of EEOC data by reinstating data-sharing with academic researchers through an agreement with the U.S. Census Bureau, ensuring data protection. They launched interactive dashboards featuring anonymized data collections from 20117 and 2018, including a comparison tab that allows users to analyze pay disparities by race, sex, industry, and job type. These advancements demonstrate the team’s commitment to data transparency and evidence-building efforts.

Excellence in Data Governance

Dr. Neeraj Koul, Department of Transportation (CFO)

As the Federal Railroad Administration’s (FRA) Chief Data Officer, Dr. Neeraj Koul has significantly elevated data governance within the FRA by promoting its importance throughout the data lifecycle, laying a foundation for future improvements in railroad safety. He established an architecture planning review board to ensure all new systems consider data management, preventing data silos and improving integration and analytics. Additionally, Dr. Koul initiated a Community of Practice for data education and developed an innovative policy to meet Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (Section 22417) requirements using existing resources, and avoiding unplanned IT projects.

Data Champion of the Year

Andre Newsom, Department of Energy (CFO):

Andre leads data management practices at Kansas City National Security Campus's (KCNSC) driving data ecosystem innovation and standardization initiatives. In 2023, he helped present at the national labs summit on API management, fostering collaboration across the Department of Energy, and partnered with internal stakeholders to develop API assets that support next-generation data solutions.

Team of the Year

The CDO Team, Railroad Retirement Board (Non-CFO):

The U.S. Railroad Retirement Board is pioneering digital transformation under its first Chief Data Officer, Dr. Kathleen McGuire, along with Annette Catalano, William Davis, James George, Vadim Libes, Keith McElroy, focusing on improving customer and digital experiences to reduce costs and manual labor. Key accomplishments include consolidating on-premise servers, addressing data and latency issues in legacy systems, converting outdated reports to relational databases, and training employees in data analytics and integration, all aimed at propelling the agency into a data-driven organization.

The NEAS Team, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (CFO):

The NASA Enterprise Automation Service (NEAS) has enhanced data upskilling and accessibility by integrating the Microsoft Power Platform and dataverse across NASA, centralizing low-code/no-code tools for efficient task automation. The transition to Power BI has improved data visualization and decision-making capabilities with a significant boost in tool adoption following the "Microsoft Power Palooza'' training event, organized by NEAS, increasing monthly active users by over 230% from 11,000 to 26,000 today.

Federal Chief Data Officer Council Distinguished Achievement in Federal Data – Individuals or Teams who make truly exceptional contributions to Federal Data and the use of data in policy-making.

Federal Chief Data Officer Council Distinguished Federal Data Innovator Award – For the mavericks (individuals or teams) who develop creative and “outside the box” ideas, help design them, and see them through to execution, including interagency collaborations, creative uses of data, interactive analytics products, etc.

Federal Chief Data Officer Council Data Champion of the Year – For Federal employees, outside of the Agency Data office, who make significant contributions to expanding data activities for their programs or agencies.

Federal Chief Data Officer Council Excellence in Data Governance – Open to personnel or teams who champion policies, processes, or procedures to enhance data governance throughout the Federal government or between state, local, and tribal governments.

Federal Chief Data Officer Council Team of the Year – Highlights the achievements of Federal teams who made strides in leveraging data as a strategic asset in or across agencies. For consideration for this award, teams may be composed of personnel within the data community or consist of cross-functional personnel (privacy, evaluation, statistical personnel, etc.).

Federal Chief Data Officer Council Award Working Group Superior Contributor – For CDOC WG members with superior performance in the execution of WG goals. Selected by WG chair.

Award nominations must be submitted by a CDO Council member and should describe, in an unclassified manner, the challenge and outcomes of the project or team actions. Nominations will be scored based on accomplishment of any of the following:

• Creativity, innovative approach to a data challenge;
• Impact (ie: Saved time, money, resources; increased synergies, collaboration, etc.);
• Impact on Internal and/or External Customer Experience;
• Promotion of Data Culture

Each nomination will be scored on a scale of 1-5 in each for the aforementioned criteria. Nominations must score an average of 3 or higher for selection as a winner in any category.

Only Federal Employees and military personnel are eligible for this program. Each category will allocate up to two awards annually, one for a CFO-Act Agency recipient or team and one for a non-CFO Act Agency recipient or team. Contract staff are ineligible for consideration.

• CFO-Act Agencies: This category is open to Chief Data Officers and support staff from any of the 24 Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act agencies. The 24 CFO Act Agencies include:

  • Agency for International Development
  • Department of Agriculture
  • Department of Commerce
  • Department of Defense (including Military Departments)
  • Department of Education
  • Department of Energy
  • Department of Health and Human Services
  • Department of Homeland Security
  • Department of Housing and Urban Development
  • Department of the Interior
  • Department of Justice
  • Department of Labor
  • Department of State
  • Department of Transportation
  • Department of the Treasury
  • Department of Veterans Affairs
  • Environmental Protection Agency
  • General Services Administration
  • National Aeronautics and Space Administration
  • National Science Foundation
  • Nuclear Regulatory Commission
  • Office of Personnel Management
  • Small Business Administration
  • Social Security Administration

• Non-CFO-Act Agencies: Chief Data Officers and support staff from any Non-CFO Act Agency are eligible for consideration.

  The CDO Council definition of “Agency” comes from 44 USC 3502. Under the definitions in that section the term Agency means:(1)the term “agency” means any executive department, military department, Government corporation, Government controlled corporation, or other establishment in the executive branch of the Government (including the Executive Office of the President), or any independent regulatory agency, but does not include—

  • the Government Accountability Office;
  • Federal Election Commission;
  • the governments of the District of Columbia and of the territories and possessions of the United States, and their various subdivisions; or
  • Government-owned contractor-operated facilities, including laboratories engaged in national defense research and production activities

Annual/ Per Calendar Year (1 Jan - 31 Dec)

Distinguished Federal Data Innovator Award

Shawn Tufts, Jay Gregory, Seth Hasty, Eli Velazquez, Department of Transportation (CFO):

The Federal Aviation Administration's UAS Operations Team, AJW-124, is leveraging the remote sensing capabilities of Small UAS (sUAS) technologies to augment maintenance operations, infrastructure inspections, engineering assessments, troubleshooting coverage and line of sight problems, and siting of new towers in the National Airspace System (NAS). The team was able to demonstrate the use of remote sensing capabilities of small drones in tandem with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to deliver a new ecosystem of capabilities to drive organizational business intelligence. The visualization of data products enabled maintenance and engineering assessments on NAS infrastructure to be completed safer (no physical climbs), more efficient (less time and personnel), and more thorough (high resolution imagery of places easily missed with the naked eye).

Excellence in Data Governance

Ms. Erycka Reid, Department of the Air Force (CFO):

Ms. Erycka Reid is an exemplary leader in data governance, she led a 13-person team providing Data and AI Strategic Services to a 700K+ member enterprise. Additionally, she successfully prepared the Data Battlespace with strategy, governance, and policy that directly increased the Department of the Air Force Data and AI capability to drive Enterprise Domain Awareness. Ms. Reid's proactive approach enabled her team to develop quantifiable measures for success and metrics for accountability for delivering ambitious results across the enterprise. In addition, her efforts established the DAF Data and Artificial Intelligence Council, which provides oversight and resourcing of the DAF DSE and DAF Data Fabric production to deliver Enterprise Domain Awareness.

Nicholas Buggs and Joshua Spicka (Team), Nuclear Regulatory Commission (CFO):

In 2022, Nicholas Buggs and Joshua Spicka led an effort to establish a Data Stewardship community across the agency. This included the creation of the Data Steward role, the identification of potential Data stewards, the validation of Data Stewards in all offices and regions, and the training of Data Stewards with respect to their responsibilities in this role. This effort has established a platform through which data governance best practices and standards can be communicated and agency wide collaboration around data can occur. The role of every office and region in managing data as a strategic asset has now been reinforced and the agency has taken a significant step forward in its efforts to unite around data.

Team of the Year

Operation Welcome Nica, Department of State (CFO):

“Operation Welcome Nica” successfully brought together multiple Federal, State, and civil society partners to support the arrival of the 222 Nicaraguan political prisoner parolees in safety and dignity. The data and analytics team at State lead by Tressa Finerty, S/ES Deputy Executive Secretary, was considered a central component to the success of this operation and was one of the first offices called upon to support the crisis operation. The data collected by this State-led operation was shared and used by interagency partners including the White House NSC, the Office of the Vice President, DHS, HHS, parolee destination states, and partner NGOs. By placing data at the core of its operations and anticipating the need to effectively collect, manage, and report data between February 9 and February 14, 2022, the broader “Operation Welcome Nica” resulted in a safe and dignified arrival in the U.S. of 222 political prisoners from Nicaragua.

Data Champion of the Year

John Stevens, Federal Reserve System (Non-CFO):

John Stevens, the senior associate director at the Research & Statistics division of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (the Board), has been a great data champion at the Board. John became the first vice chair of the Board Data Council, a data governance body that consists of data leaders and practitioners from all Board’s divisions. He and the CDO, along with the support of the Board Data Council, developed the first Board Data Strategy at the enterprise level. He was one of the critical initiators to establish a new program to improve the Board data download program to better share the Board's published data and engage with the Broader public data users.

Andrea Palm, HHS (CFO):

Deputy Secretary Andrea Palm has demonstrated an exceptional commitment to increasing data capacity at HHS and applying data for better, faster decision-making. In mid-2022, Deputy Secretary Palm convened a 10-person cross-agency team - including leaders from the Immediate Office of the Secretary and Office of the Chief Information Officer - to develop and implement a data strategy for the Department. She also ensured that a diverse group of over 150 stakeholders were engaged, including program and data leaders at each of HHS' operating divisions; representatives from private industry, nonprofit organizations, academia, and state and local governments; as well as experts in data policy and systems. The resulting vision, priorities, and initiatives enjoy widespread support within the organization at every level.

Distinguished Achievement in Federal Data

Katherine Tom, CDO, Federal Reserve System (Non-CFO):

Katherine Tom has served as the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (FRB) Chief Data Officer for two years. She developed critical objectives informed by Federal Data initiatives in transforming Office of the Chief Data Officer and promoting data governance and data management best practices. She built great collaborative relationships with the Federal Reserve System data management community and played critical leadership roles on several enterprise data initiatives through which she leveraged strategic vision and strengths in translating the data strategic vision into concrete operating plans.

Sharon Boivin, Layne Morrison, Soumya Sathya, Department of Education (CFO):

The Department of Education (ED) prioritized Goal 2—Building Human Capacity to Leverage Data—in its inaugural Data Strategy and has since been recognized as a pioneer, promoting an exceptional data culture and community while sharing its innovations through the Federal CDO Council. This team from the ED Office of the Chief Data Officer led the work on Goal 2 throughout 2022 and, through their efforts, dramatically advanced data skills development to fundamentally empower ED employees, advancing strategic data use across the agency. One of their 2022 accomplishments included the deployment of the ED Data Competency Framework with four competencies (Data Program, Data Operations, Data Analysis, and Advancing the Use of Data) and 16 sub competencies at five proficiency levels. Another accomplishment included the launch of the first ED Data Science Training Program, graduating 28 new data scientists from 11 ED offices who will apply their skills within their areas of domain expertise. Through these and other efforts, the Department of Education has cultivated a sustainable resource that will support strategic use of data for years to come and did so by prioritizing the Department’s most valuable asset—its dedicated staff.

Working Group and Committee Superior Contributors

Small Agency Committee: Katherine Tom, Federal Reserve Board and Geoffrey Nieboer, Federal Deposit Insurance Company

Large Agency Committee: Dorothy Aronson, National Science Foundation

Data Sharing Working Group: Monique Eleby, Census Bureau

Data Inventory Working Group: Brian Reichenbach, Department of State

Data Skills Working Group: Arun Acharya, Consumer Product Safety Division and Lin Zhang, Department of Interior

Data Ethics and Equity Working Group: Erin Dawson, National Science Foundation

Distinguished Federal Data Innovator Award

Agency Reporting Modernizations Team, Federal Energy Regulation Commission:

The FERC Agency Reporting Modernization Team led an initiative at FERC to modernize the reporting capability of the agency by moving away from its legacy Crystal Reports platform to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform and Power BI. FERC Agency Reporting (FAR) program provides staff with unprecedented access to data from 10 internal data assets by establishing interactive dashboards and supporting self-service analytics. FAR promotes broader use of FERC’s internal data by program office staff, including business analysts and data scientists, and improves access to capabilities that best align with their needs.

Rachel Wang and Jen Storm-Jenkins, Department of State:

Rachel Wang leads data platform services in the Office of Management Strategy & Solutions' Center for Analytics (M/SS/CfA) and falls under the Department CDO. Jen Storm-Jenkins is CfA's Technology Director and falls under the Department's CIO in the Bureau for Information Resource Management (IRM). Rachel and Jen co-lead a CIO-CDO hybrid team and led the Department's transformation in Data and Technology Platform Services. Recognizing the increased demand for data ingestion, storage, science, and visualization technology services, Rachel and Jen led the effort to create a common architecture solution. The resultant platform called Data.State democratizes access to technology, data, and analytics and enables data-informed decision-making organizational units at State headquarters and Embassies, Missions, and Consulates across the globe.

Excellence in Data Governance

Stephen Lewis, Department of Transportation:

As the federal lead for the National Address Database initiative (NAD) at the Department of Transportation (DOT), Mr. Lewis has embraced a distributed data governance model. The initiative is a true partnership effort, where local and tribal governments are recognized as the authoritative source for the address points that comprise the NAD. In most cases, the local and tribal data is rolled up to the state government level and then submitted to the NAD by state partners. To date, the NAD includes 38 state partners (including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico), 30 of which have submitted data. In states with restricted data or no address programs, the NAD has 28 county and 2 tribal partners. Mr. Lewis works with each partner to establish update frequencies based on their processes and publishes a new release of the NAD every 3 months. The latest release contained 65.3 million records.

Chris Haffer, Mark Leach, Ada Harris, and Kevin Malloy, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission:

This nomination recognizes members of EEOC's District Demographic Dashboard [D3] Team for designing, developing, and deploying an interactive visualization dashboard for State, Local, and Tribal Affairs and District Field enforcement staff. The team also provided support and training with a User Guide, demonstrations, and Q&A sessions with each stakeholder group. To the EEOC's knowledge, the launch of this dashboard marks the first time these stakeholder groups have been provided with self-service data and analytical tools, creating efficiencies in their work and Agency outreach efforts. The dashboard has broken down traditional institutional boundaries by establishing new partnerships between stakeholders. In addition, the innovative dashboard provides agency enforcement staff with new, additional analytical tools to combat systemic discrimination.

Team of the Year

Data Governance Division, Data Management Branch, Federal Energy Regulation Commission:

The Data Governance Division's Data Management Branch (DMB) led the implementation and deployment of FERC's "Athena" Platform – an innovative data science platform hosted on Microsoft's Azure cloud services - in partnership with divisions across FERC's CIO Organization. The scope of this program is to deploy, enhance, and maintain a cloud-hosted, user friendly, data science platform which provides on-demand, self-service capabilities and tools for data analysts to identify, curate, process, analyze, visualize and share results and outputs from FERC datasets.

Air Force Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Office, Department of the Air Force:

The Department of the Air Force's (DAF)  Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) successfully demonstrated the ability to service the entire DAF enterprise from the headquarters level. Over the last fiscal year, the team developed robust policies that operationalize data down to the lowest level of the DAF. With a budget of less than $80M, the number of operational users the CDO enabled was approximately 20K (total cost per user $4,000) across two data platforms with the DAF and also Joint partners in OSD Advana and the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. Due to the team's successes, the Under Secretary of the Air Force charged the office with a Data Investment Review to ensure the DAF remains operationally relevant. The team increased its total business capture in the DAF program by over 600%. Furthermore, the team's proven capabilities led the DAF personnel management community, AF/A1, to partner with their data platforms in order to modernize their personnel management data systems; the total value of the 33 month sprint between the AF/A1 and CDO is $1.6M.

Data Champion of the Year

Kimberly Lewis and Yolanda Cooper, Federal Energy Regulation Commission:

In close partnership, FERC's Data Governance Division and FERC's Acquisition Services Division successfully established and awarded FERC's first Data Support Services multiple award Blanket Purchase Agreement to procure timely, high-quality, and cost-effective support for Data Support Services at FERC. The strategic acquisition planning, guidance, and leadership from FERC's Contracting Officers allowed for the seamless award of this crucial contracting vehicle. It ensured that FERC has the necessary resources to successfully expand the data program as it matures to meet the requirements of the agency, Evidence Act, Federal Data Strategy, and the public.

Brian McKeon, Department of State:

Since joining the Department of State in 2021, Deputy Secretary McKeon has been a tireless advocate of all things data. From signing the Department's first-ever Enterprise Data Strategy and kicking off the first two Data Strategy Campaigns, Deputy Secretary McKeon has continued to push the Department to modernize its processes and use data to inform and drive its decision-making. Every six months, he leads a group of principals across the Department in deliberations to choose the next set of Data Campaigns—a process that helps the Department surge data science and policy resources around the Department's—and the world's—most pressing issues. Additionally, he has worked alongside other data leaders and practitioners to support data policy updates in the Department. These efforts to improve data transparency, data management, and data analytics platforms have helped put the Department on the leading edge of the federal data landscape. Furthermore, Deputy Secretary McKeon's advocacy has helped Department stakeholders better harness data to solve problems around crisis management, diversity and inclusion, and cybersecurity.

Distinguished Achievement in Federal Data

Wildland Fire Fuels Team, Department of Interior:

The interagency Wildland Fire Fuels Data Management team utilized groundbreaking knowledge graph tools to facilitate efficient interagency data governance that promotes understanding and coordination between partners. The Fuels Knowledge Graph Project focused on glossaries and key reference data to support the coordination of hazardous fuel reduction activities. The flexibility of the knowledge graph allows all partners to define and describe their vocabularies and data, including business rules for collection and use and the relationships between data from multiple sources. The use of common reference data sets enables more consistency across partners. The team coordinated with the states of CA, UT, NV, and TX to ensure non-federal representation. They also identified source data from USGS, OMB, OPM, and Treasury to promote the value of authoritative data sources and linked open data principles. The knowledge graph is transforming data governance in a complex, interagency environment.

Chris Haffer, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission:

In November 2017, Chris Haffer was appointed the EEOC's first Chief Data Officer. His initial direction was to modernize the agency's data processing functions and build a 21st-century data and analytics organization while utilizing state-of-the-art data science tools and techniques, and efficiently leveraging data to reduce burden and costs while protecting individual and employer privacy and promoting program transparency. In FY2022, this transformation to a 21st-century data and analytics organization was solidified with the launch of state-of-the-art products and services, from the EEOC Data and Analytics Modernization Program portfolio. These products support data-driven decision-making by clients and customers inside and outside government, adopting industry best practices and hiring skilled data scientists.

Working Group and Committee Superior Contributors

Small Agency Committee: Kirsten Dalboe, Federal Energy Regulation Commission

Large Agency Committee: Tom Sasala, Department of Defense

Data Sharing Working Group: Arun Acharya, Consumer Product Safety Division

Data Inventory Working Group: Robbin Rappaport, Internal Revenue Service

Data Skills and Workforce Development Working Group: Erik Price, Office of the Director of National Intelligence; Layne Morrison, Department of Education; Robin Wagner, National Institute of Health