Federal Data Strategy Issues its 2021 Action Plan

Though 2021 has nearly come and gone, the Federal Data Strategy (FDS) issued its latest annual action plan with just a few months left in the year. The 2021 Action Plan follows the 2020 Action Plan, released in December 2019. The latest plan outlines specific steps towards implementing the 40 practices described under the FDS, which promote a data-centric culture, mature governance and institute effective data use.

The FDS provides a 10-year roadmap to effectively using data as a strategic asset among federal agencies. To achieve its decadal vision, the strategy provides an incremental climb from, “Foundational activities of governance, planning, and infrastructure (~2020-2022), to Enterprise activities of standards, budgeting, and coordination (~2023-2025), to Optimized activities of self-service analytics (~2026-2028), and finally, to Data-Driven activities of proactive evidence-based decisions and automated data improvements (~2029 and forward),” according to the FDS site. The 2021 Action Plan aims to improve the effectiveness of the foundational activities set by the precursor plan.

Incorporating lessons learned from the 2020 Action Plan, the 2021 plan emphasizes flexibility by encouraging agencies to focus on the data areas that best serve their mission, while also pushing agencies to share best practices with each other.  

The 2021 plan contains 11 actions, with the first six set as agency-specific goals, while the remaining five serve as community of practice and shared solutions actions.  

Nearly all actions call for a Dec. 31, 2021 completion date. Nonetheless, the plan allows agencies to at least begin working towards the plan’s milestones before the end of the year given its delayed release.