(US and Canada) Rayid Ghani, Distinguished Career Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, speaks with Maria Espona, Professor — ArgIQ and CDO Magazine Editorial Board Member, in a video interview about enterprise data management in the public sector and integrating technology into the broader strategy.

Ghani says public sector organizations often collect data without knowing what to do with it. Instead, they must design the data management and analytics plan to solve problems. People on the data side need to understand what it is to be used for. He explains that the people collecting the data have no incentive to collect it if it doesn’t help them.

Regarding ways government organizations can ensure the right solutions for problems, Ghani says they want people with an interdisciplinary skill set who can figure out the right tools to use for specific problems. He shares that Carnegie Mellon and other universities have started creating programs to train students in various disciplines, such as machine learning, database usage, and social sciences, to prepare them for the public sector.

Next, Ghani discusses ways to integrate technology into a broader strategy and measure effectiveness. He mentions that centralized analytics and data teams and federated teams have their challenges. While the centralized approach has more people in one place, they don’t understand the policy teams’ needs.

Also, embedded analytics talent consists of one person who understands the policy problem but is responsible for everything related to data, he notes. In contrast, Ghani suggests that data analytics people should be supported, trained, and given feedback by a group that understands the problem they are trying to solve.

CDO Magazine appreciates Rayid Ghani for sharing his insights and data success stories with our global community.

See more from Rayid Ghani