In state and local governments, a consolidated view of all the data and records generated by individual constituents is a distant, idealized goal. Yet it is a service vision that holds a powerful grasp on government executives. Like corporations that have integrated large chunks of customer data, public-sector agencies hope a complete data view will enable them to improve service levels, speed turnaround times and even polish their public image.
In reality, state and local governments face enormous technical, policy, and financial obstacles to integrating data from different systems and agencies. First, there are the inherent difficulties of combining data from many different, older, stovepiped systems. On top of that is the challenge of justifying the need for consolidation, which often spurs public fears that data could fall into the wrong hands and be misused.
As a result, most data consolidation in the state and local government marketplace is practical and piecemeal. "The issue of data consolidation or integration is coming up only on an application-by-
application basis," said Rick Knode, vice president and general manager of operations and telecommunications for the San Diego Data Processing Center, which is wrestling with how best to create a more unified data architecture.
To help the process, a new generation of software tools has been introduced to link databases. If, for example, the San Diego center replaces a mainframe application with a client/server Oracle Corp. database application and needs to provide World Wide Web views of the old CICS or IMS data and the new Oracle data, "we look for middleware tools that can help," Knode said.
Another common-sense approach to data consolidation is to build a centralized "data dictionary" and allow each agency to control access to its own data.
That's what North Carolina's statewide Federated Data Initiative is all about. For the past six months, state IT planners have been working on a centralized data dictionary that stores information defining, for example, whether tomatoes are fruits or vegetables and whether the state serves families or households.
"Many think this data dictionary effort is an esoteric project, but in reality it's critical," said Emilie Schmidt, chief technology officer for North Carolina's Information Technology Services. "So many data warehouses have failed. We see the need to set up the data dictionary so accurate comparisons of data from different systems can be made, and data can be shared across agencies."
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