EPA Data Governance Council

Meeting Summary- June 29, 2020

Poll	Results

•	The Chief Data Officer (CDO) reviewed the results of the interest in subcommittees poll.

•	Respondents were most interested in the Data Governance Structure Development subcommittee.

•	The Data Literacy/Skills Assessment subcommittee has kicked off their efforts.

Updates on Major Activities

•	Poll agency for priorities based on common challenges.

•	Publish and update data inventories.

•	Identify priority data assets for Agency open data plans.

•	Identify data needs to answer priority Agency Questions (Broader Evidence Act Activities).

•	Institutionalize Agency data governance.

•	Assess data and related infrastructure maturity (Gartner)

•	Identify opportunities to increase staff data skills.

•	Evaluation of COTS data management software platforms.

o Support is needed on gathering requirements for the evaluation of COTS data management
software platforms.

•	Webpage development

o The data webpage is almost complete. All council members' names will be listed on a page
within the site as required by OMB.

IT Portfolio Review (ITPR) Data Conversations

•	Completed most of the data discussions.

•	Capturing data for the inventory through data priorities.

•	Capturing a first pass at data challenges and opportunities.

•	Next steps include summarizing results and having a follow up conversation with IT/IM leaders at the
IT/IM meeting in July.

•	The results from the discussions will be shared with the Council.

•	The CDO presented highlights from the initial ITPR discussions.

o Need to better identify and standardize some of EPA's critical data.

o For regulated facilities, what is included in standard facilities data as well as how we geolocate
them.

o Drinking water data needs to be improved.

o Need to improve the standardization of data served to regions. Currently, the end user has to do

a lot of work in order to use the data in the format it is delivered,
o Staff and EPA facilities data needs improvements. Tracking staff, their reporting and

organizational assignments is difficult. There are also buildings with the same names which adds
complexity to maintaining accurate facilities data,
o Service enable data
¦ Financial

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June 29, 2020

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¦ Information collection with outside entities

Introduction of Facilities Data Efforts

•	The Office of Information Management (OIM) presented on the facility data business needs project.

•	OIM distributed a survey to get input from business-oriented staff and set up interviews throughout the
summer to gather requirements.

•	An analysis of the surveys and interview data will be completed in the fall of 2020.

•	The subsequent steps include:

o Realigning facility data management procedures,
o Performing an alternatives analysis,
o Implementing a formal governance body.

Evidence Act Updates

•	Priority questions were developed for the three priority areas.

•	Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the EPA Administrator were briefed.

•	When the Administrator approves the priority questions, the CDO will distribute the write-ups to the
Council.

•	The Agency wants to learn if we have enough data, do we have the right data and what is the quality of
the data?

•	The Evaluation and Evidence Gathering Policy draft is close to completion. This will go through a full
Agency review. The council will also review the draft.

•	Capacity assessment planning is underway. This will be directly attached to our data maturity
assessment and data skills/literacy assessment.

Data Skills Assessment

•	The CDO presented on data literacy and assessing data skills.

•	The culture change of getting everyone at the Agency to rely more on evidence and data is the crux and
the hard work that this Council needs to do.

•	All people need some data skills, but not all people need all data skills.

•	We want to make sure that the right people in the right positions, have the right skills.

•	What do we need to do initially?

o Conduct a survey. Gartner has questions in 5 domains. Additional questions are on the Council's
Teams site on the Wiki.

o The plan is to have a draft of questions to assess EPA's data literacy by the end of next week,
o Target a program or a complementary set of programs to start. This will be iterative, where we
have data skills and literacy assessments until we capture the entire Agency.

•	We need to figure out a long-term path forward for assessing our data skills and literacy.

Action Items

•	n/a

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