White House Releases 2021 Data Strategy Action Plan

The Federal Data Strategy, a government-wide plan to coordinate and accelerate the use of data in federal policymaking (see previous coverage), released its 2021 Action Plan in October. The plan lays out a set of aspirational milestones for data governance, planning, and infrastructure across federal agencies. Acknowledging the late-in-the-year release and the context of a presidential transition year, the document recognizes that agencies “may only begin” working towards the targets described in the plan by the end of the year. The Action Plan describes successes and lessons learned in 2020 and sets out a set of 11 actions for 2021, divided into agency actions and cross-agency actions (“community of practice and shared solution actions”).

Agency Actions

• ACTION 1: Gather and Assess Data Identified for Priority Agency Questions
• ACTION 2: Mature Data Governance
• ACTION 3: Data and Infrastructure Maturity
• ACTION 4: Increase Staff Data Skills
• ACTION 5: Publish Agency Open Data Plans
• ACTION 6: Enhance Quality of Data Inventories

Community of Practice and Shared Solution Actions

• ACTION 7: Artificial Intelligence & Automation
• ACTION 8: Government-wide Dashboards and Infrastructure
• ACTION 9: Data Skills Workforce Development
• ACTION 10: Interagency Wildland Fire Fuels Data Management
• ACTION 11: Geospatial Data Practice

The full Action Plan is available on the data strategy website.