Preparing to modernize data-sharing systems

The idea of data is undergoing a transformation because of the need for government agencies to collaborate and cooperate to become a modern interoperable enterprise, said Pradeep Goel, CEO of EngagePoint, during a session at the State Health IT Connect Summit.

Communities have been working to modernize, said Kimberly Williams, chief strategist of Informatica Public Sector, because, unlike the private sector they are never going to increase their market share or increase their profit. Government needs big data to maximize their funding. Many have a goal of establishing an interconnected, service-oriented, data-sharing system across federal and local governments, she said, but recent high-profile breaches like the Target incident during the Christmas holiday is making people nervous about sharing their data.

The challenges to sharing are increasing, said Goel. “Program modernization will increasingly require access to multiagency and community data to improve access, improve outcomes and reduce costs. In the current world, data is collected, owned and managed within the context of a specific program, purpose and system. As programs modernize and become more interoperable, IT systems are transforming from monolithic silos to service-oriented, interoperable frameworks. Data sharing will become both the essential ingredient and a barrier to the transition of government to a modern, interoperable enterprise.”

In the current IT structure, the majority of time and resources are all spent at the infrastructure level, said Williams. Then, money is spent on applications. “By the time you figure out your infrastructure, you think you’re half done. By the time you look at the data, you’re out of time and your money is gone. Data is the last thing you think about.” But, when considering the value, data have the most value. Focus first on the data, she said, including what to capture, how to capture, how to store, how to share and what you will ultimately do with the information. The infrastructure really should be the smallest part of your focus, she said.

“It’s important in a public structure,” said Greg Franklin, CEO of Franklin HIT and former deputy secretary of HIT at the California Technology Agency, “to think broadly on who’s going to use it. The justification of your funding is going to be the public good. You have to show the value to the public.”

Much of data is copied, said Williams, and “once you replicate data it becomes a quality and security problem.” In fact, almost all of the major breaches across government at all levels over the past couple of years involved a copy of the source data because they were not secured in the same way and typically don’t have the same governance. That duplicate data “poses the most risk to everyone regardless of what system they’re working on.”

Speaking of governance, that is not a static process, said Franklin. Communities are going to be inundated with data with the progression of the Affordable Care Act. “This journey to viewing and looking at the whole person is going to create a government structure and not just IT people are going to require an expanded view of data aggregation.” Data sources are going to get a flood of new data to clean, categorize and move to a place where it can be used, he said.

“We need to treat data as an asset class that has a well-defined model, residency, publishing, subscription and governance model,” said Goel.

“A system born out of modernization is going to have to be virtual, ubiquitous, cross state lines, cross state and federal programs, and also have a technical platform that isn’t so dependent on annual modernization because of the complexity of the data,” said Franklin. People also will have to readjust their expectations because there isn’t one specific answer. “The answer is driven by how data are defined, how value and, more importantly, the data in and of itself and what it means to the public.”