VIDEO | U.S. Bureau of the Fiscal Service CDO: Digital Transformation is Not a Goal

(US and Canada) Justin Marsico, Chief Data Officer and Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Bureau of the Fiscal Service, speaks with Denise Collison, SHI International SVP and President of Public Sector Sales, about the approach to digital transformation at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, adoption of new technology, and the difference between being data driven and data inspired.

The Bureau of the Fiscal Service is a part of the U.S. Treasury Department that helps to run the finances of the federal government. Marsico’s job is to understand where data is coming in, where it is getting collected, and how to use it to make programs and operations more efficient.

From his perspective, digital transformation is not the goal. Instead, Marsico says the goal is the desired outcome of transformation. He aims to have a data-driven organization where decisions are made at all levels of the organization using data that is highly accessible, accurate, and easy to use. He mentions that digital transformation looks different in every single business or government organization.

When asked about how he keeps up with rapidly changing technology, Marsico says that the goal is to reach a point where the organization is capable of adopting new technologies without causing seismic shifts in its processes. At the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the task currently is to get data out of legacy systems and make it accessible across the enterprise, he adds, easing the shift from one technology to another.

Sharing his views on being data-informed versus data-driven, Marsico gives the example of how the Bureau of the Fiscal Service provides data to the public. As the organization brings in money through taxes, Marsico says it has a responsibility to tell the public what happened to it. He explains that it is not good enough to just disclose where the money went. According to Marsico, success is when members of the public can understand or feel a sense of trust.

Marsico points out the importance of recognizing that a lot of organizations have cultures where data has not been a part of the mix, and people are used to making decisions in a certain way. He concludes that, while it is good to inform, it is better to elaborate on how a decision was made based on insights and the particular metrics used to achieve it.