Developments in Data Governance at the US Department of Labor

The US Department of Labor (DOL) contains many agencies which are broken into 3 groups: administration, policy, and enforcement. The Bureau of Labor Statistics sits alone outside this basic framework. These DOL agencies produce data, but this activity is not the main focus of their work. This has consequences, as discoverability, quality, understanding, interoperability, and the ability to blend data are not optimized.

The Office of Data Governance (ODG) at DOL was established and resolved to address these issues. The task for the office is to develop a framework for good data governance at DOL and set a path towards building the capabilities to maintain it. All this is to be done with a small staff and very little budget.

The focus of this talk will be on the 5 enforcement agencies at DOL: EBSA (benefits), MSHA (mine safety), OFCCP (federal contracts), OSHA (occupational safety), and WHD (wages). Enforcement is somewhat of a misnomer, as the main interest of the agencies is to gain compliance with their laws and regulations. When an inspection occurs and violations are found, the efforts of the agencies are to bring the violating establishments into compliance. The efforts are not to punish, though fines are sometimes necessary.

With the exception of mining, inspections occur when a violation is suspected at some establishment. So, the data are not representative of a larger population, and the data are mostly hand entered. As would be expected, problems arise from this situation.

In the talk, we will describe the program being developed by ODG with emphasis on • working with the other agencies • functionality being developed • problems being solved stressing the adaptation of parts of DDI-CDI and the use of machine actionable metadata.