Ted Kaouk, chief data officer at the Department of Agriculture, discusses the agency’s dashboard systems, and how data plays into managing USDA’s IT modernization efforts.
The Department of Agriculture is a ‘lighthouse’ agency for the General Services Administration’s Centers of Excellence modernization project. One of the ongoing CoE initiatives at USDA involves leveraging data to target IT improvements. According to Ted Kaouk, chief data officer at USDA, these data dashboard sets are helping to change the IT environment not just across the agency, but across the government. “We started with this idea of a fact‑based, data-driven customer‑focused organization. We’re happy to hear that other agencies are interested in what we are doing. I think it gives us validation that we’re on the road to achieving that vision the secretary had of being the best managed federal agency,” Kaouk said. “We started with the vision of giving access to all of our leadership, the key information that allows them to make better decisions and manage organizations better.”
