Commerce Data Service: A Tale of Two Pillars

[Commentary] Fun fact: The world’s premier weather watcher, storm chaser and climate monitor – aka, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – gathers enough data every single day to fill the Library of Congress twice. The public also owns countless other terabytes of data that the Department of Commerce produces every day: Economic data, from jobs to paychecks to the products and services we make, provide and sell. Trade data – imports and exports – drilled down to the commodity and the community. Patent and trademark data about inventions and brands, from the first patent in 1790 for Samuel Hopkins’ crop fertilizer ingredient, signed by President Washington, to Patent 9371560 last month for, “methods for the automated reconstruction of a genotype of a gene, fragment, or genomic region using exhaustive enumeration.” The list of invaluable data that Commerce produces goes on and on.

As Secretary Pritzker said, Commerce is “America’s Data Agency.” “No other department,” she said, “can rival the reach, depth, and breadth of our data programs.” I’ve reiterated in my blogs how making the vast trove of Commerce data more accessible, useful and usable to the nation is one of the five pillars of Secretary Pritzker’s “Open for Business” strategy. And now ESA is on point to help advance the data pillar. But another job we all share is to advance one of the other five pillars, operational excellence.