White paper: Jacksonville mulls chief data officer position

One of the trends in state and local government of late: instituting and hiring a chief data officer.

Broadly speaking, a chief data officer synthesizes the often siloed information from discrete parts of an organization.

FloridaPolitics.com has acquired a white paper from the senior staff of Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry, which makes the case for a chief data officer.

“As cities become larger and larger the need to collect and update the city’s data becomes increasingly necessary,” claims the document, regarding a CDO.

“The role of a Chief Data Officer (CDO) in City Government is a relatively unexplored position that only a handful of cities currently possess. Many large companies have used Chief Data Officers to collect, manage, and maintain data beneficial to their respective company. The job of the CDO within City Government should seek to do the same; they should manage government data, decrease the cost of managing said data, increase the value of collected data, and improve the quality and collection of this data. But, more importantly, one job of the CDO is to ensure that data is available, reliable, secure, and timely,” asserts the white paper.

The paper identifies “several major hurdles that cities face when attempting to implement this position … funding, recruiting the right person as the CDO, the scope of data to collect, and technology barriers.”

One recurrent impact in Jacksonville: issues in information technology, across departments. Theoretically, these will need to be resolved along with the implementation process.

Implementation advice includes some pretty basic insights: “one major problem is finding the right person to act as the Chief Data Officer. This person must have all of the qualifications necessary to ensure that the public’s doubts of the success of this position are minimized.”

Another pressure point: “the scope of data to be collected needs to be determined. Since there is so much data out there, the possibilities are honestly endless. Research suggests honing in on specific programs or objectives and determining what data to collect to satisfy the information needed for improving those programs.”

From there, “it is always a possibility to expand the scope of data collection should the need arise.”

“Avoiding technological barriers is one of the main reasons why one of the qualifications for the Chief Data Officer requires one to be well versed with recent technological advances,” the paper continues.

“Despite the small assortment of obstacles that arise when trying to implement this position in City Government, research of other cities shows how these obstacles can be overcome with extra thought, effort, and time,” the paper concludes.