The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) adopted a data-driven, risk-informed strategy to better assess risks, prioritize investments, and cost effectively modernize its aging nuclear infrastructure. NNSA’s new strategy, and lessons learned during its implementation, will help inform other federal data practitioners’ efforts to maintain facility-level information while enabling accurate and timely enterprise-wide infrastructure analysis.

The Census Bureau team produced a new interactive mapping tool in early 2018 called the Response Outreach Area Mapper (ROAM), an application that resulted in wider use of authoritative Census Bureau data, not only to improve the Census Bureau’s own operational efficiency, but also for use by tribal, state, and local governments, national and local partners, and other community groups. Other agency data practitioners can learn from the Census Bureau team’s experience communicating technical needs to non-technical executives, building analysis tools with widely-used software, and integrating efforts with stakeholders and users.

Improving staff data skills allows agencies to better harness the power of data. This playbook provides advice and tools for assessing data skills and addressing gaps. Executing the activities contained in this document will help agencies progress in fulfilling requirements of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 and related guidance.