Agencies improve performance with enterprise approach to data analytics

Across government, many agencies retain a project-focused approach to planning and managing initiatives. Agencies risk program and service inefficiencies and redundancies—and potential mission conflict with other agencies—when essential information is siloed. One cause of this disjointed approach is disparate performance data. Further, it’s difficult and often misrepresentative to assess programs in isolation, and to do so risks missing potential project connections, impacts, and opportunities to leverage resources, expertise, and lessons learned.

An enterprise approach that aligns an organization’s projects and strategies to its mission goals can dramatically affect performance. According to a Project Management Institute research paper, organizations with an enterprise approach to project management can improve reporting services by 20 percent, strategic alignment services by 23 percent, confirmation of strategic priorities by almost 10 percent and project alignment with strategic objectives by 10 percent.

Enterprise project management enables a consistent approach to data collection, and data analytics play an integral role, as the United States Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center (AFIMSC) learned in a successful pilot study.

The AFIMSC is responsible for providing installation and mission support capabilities to 77 Air Force installations with more than 28,000 buildings and 188,000 systems in 9 major commands. With so many assets, the organization needed to assess the efficacy of their maintenance strategy. They launched a pilot infrastructure analysis that prioritized mission-critical assets holistically, without organizing them by command. A powerful dynamic visualization demonstrated how modest funding increases and effective strategy could eliminate a $24.5 billion (and growing) maintenance backlog, while achieving sustainable cost savings into the future.

This project brought a voluntary increase of data collection from 54 percent to 78 percent complete in just 6 monthsand maintenance operations across the USAF and the Department of Defense are eager to adopt the approach.

At an agency level, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) PMO is responsible for more than 100 projects and $2 billion annual budget. Integrated dashboards have brought together the financial, technical, and human resource community to rethink their approach to evaluating investments, project planning, and implementing programs.

In particular, FAA’s Human Resources department has integrated two key Office of Personal Management data collections, FedScope and the Federal Employment Viewpoint Survey (FEVS). Working with the General Services Administration to build a data mart that provides both data sets, HR developed analytics, and a series of dashboards to assess how various factors impacting employee engagement relate to retention. Analytical tools let FAA use its own data to analyze workload, organizational workforce strengths and weaknesses, and trends in hiring, retention, and benefits usage.

While many federal IT departments have embraced portfolio project management, the President’s Management Agenda is mandating a consistent and rigorous approach through the Technology Business Management (TBM) framework. With a consistent taxonomy for identifying IT resources, TBM is designed to help CIOs better understand, manage, and demonstrate value from their IT spending.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is among the first federal agencies to begin applying TBM standards. With a $200 million IT budget across its headquarters and 10 regional offices, EPA was eager to understand and demonstrate how much IT contributes to its mission goals. The agency started with a proof-of-value pilot, using one business line with robust data, with plans to develop a roadmap and strategic plan for the entire organization’s IT spend.