THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT FINANCE.

Understanding data and utilizing it is “something that's very critical to being a modern, effective leader,” according to Elena Boyd, Managing Director in Accenture’s Public Service Practice. “Historically government data use was retrospective and siloed. There was a lag between when things were happening and when they could collect the data and then analyze it. Today, government leaders have access to such a wide range of data in near real time, which allows them to identify trends earlier, prioritize faster, intervene proactively and course correct as they go.”

‍As Zachary Markovits, principal and co-founder of Fifteenth and Field, which helps public-sector leaders and their partners design and deliver the services that improve outcomes, says, “With every passing day there are more tools and opportunities to make data actionable than we've ever had before. Years ago, governing using data was often considered an analytic person’s job, and that got lifted in certain ways to senior leaders. Now, teams and people at all levels have the ability to use data to understand the way in which your government is operating.”

Though people have been talking about data-informed decision making for states and localities for some time now, a turning point came as a result of COVID. “The pandemic really showed us the power of real time data, the power of real time information to make decisions on the fly that involve saving lives, saving communities,” says Rudy de Leon Dinglas, who leads academic affairs and strategic initiatives at the Bloomberg Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University.

Beyond the ability to respond to immediate problems, data-informed decision making can help take politics out of decisions that otherwise might have been made primarily through anecdotal evidence. As Jennifer Becker, Financial Services Director of Burbank California says, “When you give your politicians real data to use, it helps hem to make decisions that aren’t based on emotions or feelings.”

Consider Miami, Florida’s efforts to speed up its permitting process. “Up until recently, we’ve been dealing with this through anecdotes,” reports Cheriene Floyd, chief data officer of Miami. “This enables our teams to know where to focus their deep dives for improvements.

“But now we have a data story on our website that speaks to some areas around permitting. We are showing the times it takes to get a permit by different scopes of work.”

Similarly, while working for a local government in Florida, we used something called an “open checkbook” where every invoice that was received was recorded and the details were available,” says David Goldman, deputy city administrator of Oak Harbor, Washington.  “But not everybody was using it.”

“So, to avoid that happening in Oak Harbor, we’ve just implemented a new ERP that went live on May 4. We’re going to start by using it internally to show department directors a great way you can monitor their own departments. And when we get to a certain point, we’d like to show that to the council and the community, because we want to be as transparent as possible. It’s one thing to have an open checkbook with 50,000 lines of invoices and call that transparent as opposed to having a way for people to get the information they want somewhat more easily.”

Then there’s Essex County, New Jersey which uses a platform developed by Civic Roundtable, a government operations platform, which was incubated at the Harvard Innovation Lab and was launched with grants from Harvard and MIT.

The county uses Roundtable’s platform to “drive innovation, collaboration and transparency between more than 80 federal, state, municipal, local, nonprofit organizations, advocating for policies on the local level, and overseeing the application of funds to support permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness,” according to a late 2025 case study.

“That’s the broad scope of it,” reports Jessica Torres of the Essex County Continuum of Care in the case study.  “In essence, we want to help inform everyone about what resources are available and help them navigate those resources to provide services for Essex County residents.”

To be clear, a great many entities still haven’t entered an age in which data is the language of government. “I’m in an organization that is very much not leading with data, not making decisions with data, because we don't have the data available,” says Haley Kadish, Policy and Budget Director for Bernalillo County, New Mexico. “But what I'm observing is that whether a leader has data or not, they have to make decisions. And the part that is so scary for me is it feels like flying blind when I don’t have data to present.” In her relatively new position, Kadish is pushing hard to get her county to dramatically change its budgeting process to make it significantly more data informed.

What can help create a more data-informed culture? One important element is making the data significantly more usable than it has been in the past. As Goldman says, “You can have a bunch of data, and you just dump it on leaders and show them a bunch of charts and graphs, and that might backfire and cause people to zone out. But if you turn the data into something they can understand, like an infographic, that helps you get your points across. Data is good but data is good only so far as you can explain what it’s saying.”

Kelly Rogers, Global Public Service Industry Strategy Lead at Accenture argues that though the move toward more data informed government is genuine, many cities, counties and states aren’t moving quickly enough and so “we need to do more around changing the culture of governments.” She recommends starting small and testing the use of data in controlled environments and then building comfort among leaders related to these new technologies.

Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is quickly changing the way cities, counties and states think of data and the ease with which they can use it. “In the age of AI,  we now have the capability to work in Excel and have an agent create the database that you are seeking to create,” says Rogers. “You don’t need to know the coding. All you have to do is chat with the agent, and it can make the spreadsheet for you.”

Rogers emphasizes, however, that the ease of AI is not a reason to disengage: “The human still has to be in the seat,” she says. “You have to understand what the tool is producing, interrogate it, and take responsibility for it — especially when you're making decisions that affect people's lives.”

Ultimately, creating a culture in which data is valued requires having public servants who are data literate, and not only want to use data to help make decisions but have the capacity to understand what they’re seeing.

Maryland is making giant steps in that direction with its Maryland Data Academy, which is expected to launch later this year. Explains Natalie Evans Harris, Chief Data Officer of Maryland, “We’re recognizing that everyone's relationship with data and AI and technology is different. So, instead of trying to create one size fits all training programs, we're forming partnerships to create opportunities for training engaging and sharing resources.

“We’re creating micro-courses for Maryland specific information, five-to-nine-minute courses to easily pick up on key components for data driven decision making, including the key questions to ask of data. What we strive for, with our Academy and with our workforce strategy, is building confidence and curiosity about how data advances your work.”

This article is supported by the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA). The article, by Barrett and Greene, is also available in the June issue of GFOA’s Women Public Finance Newsletter. 

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