Data Strategic Plan

Maryland’s Statewide Data Strategic Plan establishes and standardizes data use, management, and analysis practices, policies, and standards for the State, while recommending actions for standardizing and integrating State data systems and management practices.

Building the foundation for statewide data governance will focus on four building blocks.

Organization

Data is being governed, to varying degrees, at the Agency level already, typically as a byproduct of their business activities. The goal of improving data management and governance involves defining processes for managing data effectively through its lifecycle, while accounting for security, privacy, and risk management.  Strong data governance will also define and clarify roles, responsibilities, and processes for data use. To improve data management and governance practices, assessments, evaluations, and roadmaps for achieving improvement must be developed.

People & Culture

Effective and efficient governance, management, and sharing of data requires the ability for resources across the state to have a firm understanding of the value of data and the communication, collaboration, and skills needed to maximize that value. To support this, there is a need to develop programmatic support to inform and educate the broad organization to develop the skills needed to work with, analyze, communicate, and make decisions using data.

Collaboration 

Procedures for requesting and sharing data, and responses to data sharing requests, including data sharing agreements, vary across State Agencies. Considerable time spent is responding to data sharing requests making data sharing more difficult. Establishing protocols for data sharing between State Agencies that standardizes the exchange of data, in compliance with legal and security measures, will create a streamlined approach, lowering the barriers to collaboration with data to solve problems.

Innovation

Innovative technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), play an important role in a data-centric organization. These technologies can support data governance, data management, data quality, and analytics through automation and optimization. While some Agencies and programs may be leveraging innovative technologies, there is a need to broaden the collective awareness of the capabilities, assess current skills and ability to adopt, and share success stories for expanded use across the State.

The State of Maryland’s Statewide Data Strategic Plan is developed to cover a two-year time period. Learn more by view the current Strategic Plan.