In efforts to create greater efficiency and effectiveness of government services, the drive to better govern, share and use data is ubiquitous.   

On Thursday, January 9, a valuable webinar --  “A Roadmap to Data Governance (Part 1)” -- from the National Center for State Courts provided guidance on data systems structure and guidance from court administrative offices in Oregon and Maryland – two states that were selected to participate in the webinar because of the robust data governance structures they have in place.

Here are some of the key points that came out of the panelist presentations and follow-up discussion.

• Leadership buy-in and support is vital.

“The leaders in your organization are the champions for the cause,” said Jessica Roeser, assistant deputy in Oregon’s Office of State Court Administrator Operations. “They are your superheroes when it comes to building a new culture around data and continuous learning.”

This point was echoed by Jamie Walter, Program Director, Research & Analysis, Maryland Administrative Office of the Courts. “I would say leadership is everything for making this culture change work. And collaboration is what’s going to rally make it magical.”

• A multi-faceted team with clear roles is vital for covering a wide range of data governance responsibilities.

While data governance policy and structure in Maryland courts has been built incrementally “one drop at a time without drowning in that entire ocean,” it couldn’t depend on a small existing central research team. As the effort has progressed, so has the need for individuals with specialized skills and responsibilities. Says Walter: “We upskilled our senior researchers, and we hired a Data Governance team. We hired a data visualization specialist, a data quality analyst, data reporting analyst and a data governance manager.

In Portland, the unified court systems’ data enthusiasts took on the role of data stewards while the “students” of these new developing systems included court analysts, supervisors, managers and the court administrator. An important partner throughout was the Information Technology department, which was responsible for the “infrastructure and operational support and maintenance of our case management systems and data warehouse servers,” says Roeser.

• The quality of the data needs continuous support and attention.

Both panelists emphasized the critical importance of focusing on data quality. In Oregon, this led to the development of a supervisor dashboard “to monitor data quality and identify data entry and business process errors and training issues, even down to the user that made the error.” By tracking errors down to the user level, the court can pinpoint data entry practices that are inconsistent with statewide policy.

The importance of data quality led Maryland to turn to NCSC for a data quality study, which provided the court administrative office with a sense of management practices that would lead to fewer data errors. The report was issued just after the new data governance manager was hired along with the new data quality analyst. “This really came at an ideal time,” said Walter. “Our data quality analyst had his work list ready to go from day one.” 

• Communication to staff – in this case judges – how better and more accessible data systems can be of use to them.

“What’s really helped is showing judges that (the data) is relatable and accessible and we do that by putting judges in front of other judges to explain how they use the data,” says Maryland’s Walter, adding that by watching other judges use the dashboard and talking to them about how they use data, step by step, “they have the confidence that they can do that, too.”

This webinar is part of NCSC’s “Data Dives” series, with future webinar topics available here.

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