Analytics

A Customer’s View on How Data Dashboards Enhance Decision-Making

Data visualization software can help data analysts more efficiently distill and communicate pertinent information to their customers. Likewise, the customization available in many data visualization packages enables consumers of data to more easily obtain and sort through the information they need. In a previous blog post, I explored how the U.S. General Services Administration isRead… Read more »

5 Cool Federal Dashboards (and 2 Awesome Agency Ones)

In December 2009, the Open Government Directive established deadlines for federal agencies to make quality information available to the public, all in the name of greater transparency. Recovery.gov was one of the leaders of this open government charge, and was actually established in February 2009, ahead of the directive. Today, there are a number ofRead… Read more »

Connecting Data Silos and Achieving Your Data Mission

During yesterday’s webinar “Connecting Data Silos to Create an Actionable View of Your Data” Nicholas Skytland, Data Evangelist for NASA, said it so simply, quoting Daniel Keys Morgan, “you can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data.” Data is an integral part of making any agency successful on all of itsRead… Read more »

You Can Have it Both Ways — Centralized and Decentralized People Data Insight

For many people, staying the course, especially if things are going well, is the safest and easiest way forward. Moving away from the status quo and “the way it’s done” is difficult emotionally as well as intellectually. The same can hold true for federal agencies. As much as leadership may want to embrace change and… Read more »

“Tool” Crazy After All These Years

We have all run into the office cliché similar to the saying “if all you use is a hammer everything looks like a nail.” Another way of saying this is that if all you see are nails, anything looks like a hammer. In both cases, the focus of misunderstanding is based on overlooking the particularsRead… Read more »

Statistical Spot Checks for Your Agency’s Diversity Profile

Maintaining a diverse federal workforce and eliminating barriers to equal employment opportunity are not only required practices for federal agencies under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Management Directive 715, but are also crucial to encouraging a more effective and creative workforce with less internal strife. The private sector is now investing heavily in diversity programsRead… Read more »

The Unified Data Architecture in Action

This is an excerpt from our recent industry perspective, How Unified Data Architecture Can Revolutionize Analytics in Government. To read the full thing, head here. To see what a UDA can do to elevate business performance, look no further than the transportation industry. The airlines were one of the first to tackle the concept of growingRead… Read more »

Harness the Power of Unstructured HR Data with Text Analytics

Federal HR professionals with access to electronic employee databases typically have access to a wealth of so-called “structured” employee data, or information that can be quickly counted and analyzed in spreadsheet programs to create pivot tables and reports. Examples of structured HR data include employee salary and demographic information and employee survey responses, all ofRead… Read more »