The Social Security Administration intends to launch a new IT strategic plan that prioritizes customer-centric and data-driven initiatives, according to the agency’s information and data officials.
In an interview with Federal News Network, SSA Deputy Chief Information Officer Patrick Newbold and Chief Data Officer Rob King discussed how they are collaborating to bolster information availability, quality, security and usability based on progress from their strategy over the past 5 years.
Newbold stated that the new plan aims to digitize and reduce paper-based information and processing, and to improve employee experience by enhancing access to data needed to support their customers.
He added that the agency is looking into its applications programming interface platforms to optimize the use of both legacy and new systems. As part of their API-first strategy, SSA will expose data at the application level to expedite digital modernization.
King explained that they are analyzing information for an “apples-to-apples” comparison with the business community, stakeholders and policymakers.
“We’re defining our data with the metadata so we know where our data lives and on what systems. We know how it feeds business processes and then we can bring it together to have that ‘apples-to-apples’ data. Then we can put it into the various pipelines that we can then use to feed the digital strategy as well as advanced decision making and unified decision making and reporting,” King explained.
