Preparing for the OCDO: The HUD Experience
By the HUD Data and Analytics Center of Excellence
The General Services Administration’s Data & Analytics Center of Excellence (DA CoE), in partnership with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), has developed enterprise-wide goals for IT Modernization that includes increasing data maturity, interoperability, and governance. Similar to any agency, evolving the data and analytics maturity requires a collaborative effort between the agency’s offices and leadership. That collaboration is needed to transform data into a strategic asset for the benefit of customers and the public.
To meet that need, HUD and the DA CoE are committed to an Office of the Chief Data Officer (OCDO). A successful OCDO requires formalized organizational alignment and expectations both within the Office and across the agency. Using the CoE approach outlined in a previous post, an OCDO charter and data governance roadmap were created to assess the enterprise wide business requirements and outline the governance landscape.
Drawing from industry research and lessons learned from established agency CDOs, the DA CoE created a working group across HUD to draft the OCDO charter. The group discussed organizational alignment, expectations, roles, and responsibilities while identifying critical stakeholders. The outcome of the research and discussions with HUD stakeholders was an OCDO charter that both reflects the Federal Data Strategy 2020 Action Plan and HUD’s organizational priorities. HUD stakeholders and the DA CoE presented the OCDO charter to HUD Executives, who then reviewed and agreed to the charter. Through this inclusive process, HUD leadership now has clear expectations for the OCDO and the business value the Office can provide.
Building the formal OCDO charter provided the impetus for the roadmap, which details fundamental steps identified through the current-state assessment and gathering of business requirements. These two artifacts provided agency-wide endorsement for the OCDO and formalized discrete, achievable data-governance opportunities. The DA CoE will continue to support HUD’s data governance structure, including the existing data governance community. As the DA CoE aides in the implementation of the OCDO, HUD’s governance community will provide continuity and will assist the OCDO in implementing the roadmap.
Be on the lookout for more on Building an OCDO in our Data & Analytics CoE OCDO Series.
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