About Us

Arizona's Statewide Data Management Program is headed up by the State Data Management Architect, Jeff Wolkove. Jeff joined ADOA-ASET in 2012 to help launch a data governance program. In the last several years we have established an organization involving most of the State's Cabinet level agencies to support the program goals.

Principles

We believe that a solid Data Management Strategy must be built on sound principles.

  1. Data is an asset. To maintain its value and usefulness, data must be managed and curated with the same process rigor as any other asset.
  2. The State embraces data-driven decision-making and recognizes that this establishes the need for reliable, curated, managed, accurate and available data.
  3. The basic tenets of AMS - Decide Faster, Resolve Faster, Respond Faster - support a strategic imperative for reliable, curated, managed, accurate and available data.
  4. Executing and measuring the results of Breakthrough Initiatives involving multiple agencies require secure data sharing by and between programs and will be hampered by technical & regulatory barriers to data sharing.
  5. This State is committed to providing Arizona’s citizens and regulated entities a better experience when interacting with the State government.
  6. Establishing sound Data Management in the State constitutes a culture shift, similar to AMS and Lean. As such, sustainable data management must be actively supported by Executive leadership.

Strategy

Our Data Management Strategy supports these principles:

  1. Actively support the implementation of statewide policies that establish sound data governance and data management practices in state agencies.
  2. Train all state employees on the importance of data and how to become good stewards of the state’s data.
  3. Establish and maintain a centralized self-service, secure data hub of managed, curated, documented, integrated data to be used by authorized stakeholders for authorized purposes that further this State’s mission, including Breakthrough Projects.
  4. Establish a regulatory environment that facilitates data sharing  between State Programs.
  5. Establish a data catalog that describes the data curated and used in each State Program so that researchers can quickly locate the right data for a given problem.
  6. Establish a Master Person Index that can cross-reference a person across multiple state programs, assist with integrated analytics, and enable citizens to navigate multiple programs they interact with.
  7. Establish a Data Management Function in this State, to be headed up by a Chief Data Officer, whose full time role is to execute Arizona’s Data Strategy.

Activities

Data Management Steering Committee

The DMSC is a group of Data Management practitioners and thought leaders from multiple agencies. The DMSC meets at ADOA monthly on the 2nd Thursday of each month. The general format is a 1-hour business meeting, followed by a 1-hour educational presentation by vendors, consultants or fellow employees. We do not restrict attendance or participation. Contact us if you wish to participate. We have several sub-committees or work groups to work on various data management initiatives.

State Data Interoperability council

The SDIC meets quarternly. It consists of the Designated Parties from each participating agency under the State Data Sharing Memorandum of Understanding. 

Annual Data Management Conference

We hold an annual state data management conference. AZData 2019 will take place in November (exact dates TBD). We have set up a Steering Committee work group to plan this year's conference. Contact us if you wish to help plan or support the conference.

Policy Work Group

The DMSC Policy Work Group develops statewide data management policies to support implementation of the Data Management Maturity Model in our State Agencies. We are in need of volunteers to help with the next group of policies. Contact us to learn more.

tool selection work group

The DMSC Tool Selection Work Group's mission is to reduce the proliferation of data management tools in the State by selecting best-in-class products that meet a wide spectrum of needs. Reducing the number of producs we use increases our buying power and supports enterprise pricing models. Furthermore we wish to facilitate a Community of Interest where state employees can share information, expertise and best practices about a focused selection of products.

DMM Training

We have held two on-site training classes for the Enterprise Data Management Associate certification. We plan to hold more classes and add an advanced course for those who have achieved their EDMA designation.

Data Stewardship Training

Our goal is to train an army of Data Stewards in this state by training everyone how to be a data steward. Our philosophy of "Non Invasive Data Governance" means that everyone who uses, enters, creates, changes or reports on data implicitly has a relationship with it. That relationship makes us all accountable for its quality, integrity and accuracy. A "Steward" is responsible for exercising due care of someone's assets - in this case, the state's data. Our Data Stewardship Training Program teaches us how to do this. Contact us for information about rolling out data stewardship training in your agency.