The Institute for Chief Data Officers at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock will fill an important role to help protect and maximize big data within the state of Arkansas. 

The Arkansas Department of Information Systems has contracted the Institute for Chief Data Officers, led by Executive Director Dr. Richard Wang, to serve as the state’s chief data officer.

Wang also serves as a professor of information science at UA Little Rock and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Program.

“The College of Engineering and Information Technology is proud to host the Institute for Chief Data Officers as it combines aspects of our mission to provide groundbreaking research and address the needs of our community,” Dean Lawrence Whitman said. “The public is served when the university’s research serves the community, both corporate and government. We want our state to use state-of-the-art practices in its use of data and to be a leader in this area. I am pleased that the iCDO is accomplishing this.”

The state’s chief data officer position was created by Act 912 of 2017, which was sponsored by Rep. Austin McCollum, R-Bentonville. The act requires the director of the state Department of Information Systems to select a chief data officer as well as create an 18-member Data Transparency Panel that the chief data officer will chair.

The Institute for Chief Data Officers will help the state analyze the state’s data needs, perform a feasibility and cost study on the development of a statewide data warehouse program, and evaluate and identify data that can be published.

Wang wants to facilitate inter-agency data agreements and increase statewide data sharing and transparency.

“We have to make different data from different systems talk to each other,” Wang said. “During my first 100 days as CDO, I want to host the inaugural Arkansas CDO forum so we can begin the discussion and exchange of ideas to achieve project outcomes beneficial to the people of Arkansas.”

Another central goal for Wang is the exploration of public/private partnerships whereby Arkansas can become a national example of an effective data-driven government to better address priority public needs. This approach would also create greater value for the taxpayer dollar through better allocation of existing data to meet the needs of Arkansans, Wang said.

In recent years, state, city, and county governments have seen the value in adding a chief data officer to the workforce. Colorado was the first state to add a chief data officer in 2010. Arkansas becomes the ninth state in the U.S. to employ a chief data officer.

At the Institute for Chief Data Officers, Wang and his employees are working to train new chief data officers and perform seminal research on the topic. The institute leads multiple certificate programs throughout the year.

“I want Little Rock and central Arkansas to be the center of data in training and conducting research on big data and chief data officers,” Wang said. “We are leading the path to promote the idea of chief data officers.”

The need for chief data officers is increasing. According to the Stamford, Connecticut-based information technology research company Gartner, 90 percent of large organizations will have a chief data officer by 2019.

“I believe that chief data officers are here to stay,” Wang said. “When chief data officers show successful business results, that is when companies will demand a CDO. Our job at the Institute for Chief Data Officers is to envision a chief data officer in every major organization globally in the public and private sector.”